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In Cold Blood - Terzo x f!reader

Summary: Solitude had always appealed. Perhaps that’s why you took on this project… The thought of transforming a dilapidated old Victorian farmhouse into a sanctuary of your own, to live in peace and the romanticisms of a gothic home you fell in love with.

After the structural integrity of the house is replenished, you fill your days with DIY and decorating, bringing to life a house that had been frozen in time and left to rot for decades. You could enjoy the solitude of the land already, a few miles outside of a town plagued by disappearances and a fear of the dark. But you couldn’t escape the news of more missing people, nor the strange occurrences happening around your new home.

Were you imagining things? Or was there indeed a shadow haunting your sanctuary?

Rating: Explicit, 18+ MDNI Word Count: 19.6k (i'm back bitchesssss)

Warnings: Dark fiction, horror fic, mentions of murder, coercion, manipulation, obsession, masturbation (f), voyeurism, manhandling, threat and mild violence, dubious consent (later turns to verbal consent), oral sex (f receiving), fingering, penetrative sex, blood, blood drinking, unprotected sex

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WARNING: This is a work of DARK FICTION. It is a horror fic, and contains mentions of violence as well as elements of dubious consent and manipulation. Please do not read if this is going to affect you negatively. You have been warned, and I take no responsibility if you choose to ignore the warnings and triggers attached.

a/n: well hello there. It's been a while, hm? Radio silence and then BOOM, a 20k word fic outta nowhere? Well, this was written for the wonderful @angellayercake's birthday, and she's been so kind as to give her permission for me to share it. I promise, more new content coming soon, and I'll be working on an update for The Mayor's Daughter ASAP! Happy reading, creeps...

“What’s the catch?”

The real estate agent blinked at you in confusion, as if you’d just asked her to recite the square route of pi to the 30th decimal.

“The… the catch?” she asked, “I don’t understand.”

“Well, it’s just so cheap, I have to wonder which closet the skeletons are hiding in…” you joked, knowing full well the skeletons were actually in the backyard under the headstones that sat growing moss and ivy for the last six decades at least.

“Ma’am… I’ve been very upfront about the state of the house. It needs extensive repairs and renovation, it has a graveyard out back, it’s way out in the sticks and the landscaping is overrun… What more could be wrong with it?” She rang out her hands nervously, chewing on her cherry red lips as you scrutinised her body language. You’re sure there was something she wasn’t telling you, but this was a perfect opportunity for you…

Coming off the back of a decent chunk of inheritance left by a relative you’d long-since forgotten, you needed a project. You’d always wanted to renovate a beautifully gothic home from the 19th century, and when you saw the listing for exactly that on the edge of a small town? Ideal. Perfect. Exactly what you wanted. The thought of being a little out in the country, surrounded by land and away from the bustle of the city you grew up in was all too appealing.

“It has a charm to it, don’t you think?” you smiled to yourself, fiddling with the dusty net curtains still hanging in the living room’s huge bay window.

“Uh… sure, yeah,” the agent agreed with reluctance, still so confused as to why you would be at all interested in this ruin that she couldn’t even show you all of due to the structural integrity of the floorboards.

“I’d like to put in an offer,” you told her, turning back to face her with a smile on your face.

“You… really? Oh, my god! Okay, great! Well, I’ll get the paperwork…” she sprung into action, suddenly full of an energy that could only have been triggered by the whiff of her future commission.

It would take some work, sure, but this place had the potential to be the perfect project and future home for you…

It took six months, but the structural integrity of the house had been stabilised by a team of builders you’d hired to take care of the place while you got your affairs in order and ready to move halfway across the country. You weren’t taking much; a lot of the furniture left in the abandoned house was part of the project and with a little restoration would be absolutely beautiful. You were ready for the work, ready to create a home that you could be so proud of and had your stamp on it.

Moving into the house was quicker than you thought it would be, with most of your furniture sold and donated. For now, you had to live out of suitcases until you had a bedroom and closet space that was clean enough to hang your things in.

At the very least, you’d cleaned and stripped the four-poster bed that still lay in the master suite, checking the integrity of the bed itself and noting how… pristine it seemed compared to a lot of the other furniture left behind. But this was made of expensive, dark mahogany wood – it was built to last, and so with a polish, a new mattress and sheets? You had a gorgeous bed to sleep in each night, taking a little bit of pressure off when you’d spent an entire day exhausting yourself over more renovations.

One of your first jobs had been landscaping in the graveyard. You’d felt pulled to the graves, wanting to give whoever was buried on your property a much more respectful resting place, rather than allowing them to be swamped by ivy and moss.

It seemed to be a family plot, probably the last family to have owned the home. Every stone had the same surname, dating back to the first of the deaths in 1904. What struck you as odd, however, was the nature of the stones themselves…

For the time period, you might have expected angels, cherubs, perhaps a cross or two. But whilst these stones were ornate and beautiful, they were not steeped in biblical references at all. Instead, the eldest stone had a decaying gargoyle sat atop it… Another, a ram’s head at the base. One had a stone skeleton laying above where the body would have been buried, carved into a slab of concrete as if it was protruding from the grave itself. You’d never seen graves like this before, symbols and carvings you couldn’t identify but had you on edge the minute you looked at them. But one of those symbols, you certainly recognised.

A pentagram.

Now, as a purveyor of the dark and mysterious, you hadn’t minded the thought of a graveyard in your garden. For goodness sake, you loved the gothic aesthetic, the dark and macabre had always called out to you. But to find these graves had a theme to them, a darker, occult theme… It cast a deeper shadow over the home you’d purchased.

Who were this family? Were they part of an occult? You were itching to understand the history, to uncover more about the lost family that let their home fall to ruin and their graves be overrun by nature.

But it had to wait, the renovations taking over to make your house a far more liveable abode. With the graves at least clear from nature’s extremities, you could come back to them another time to give them a proper clean, to uncover the names in full and potentially use the information to gather more with a trip to the local library or a google search.

For now, you had to get to cleaning room by room so you could begin stripping and re-decorating where it needed it most.

“…The Sheriff’s office have released a statement today to calm locals calling for more action in the string of disappearances throughout town. Last Monday saw the latest in the line of disappearances, 29 year old store clerk, Andrew Walton, taking the total up to 12 missing in the last nine months. Mr Walton was last seen on CCTV heading into the alley of the 7/11 where he worked…”

The radio news bulletin caught your attention as you were working in the master bedroom, stripping the already peeling wallpaper from the panelled walls atop a stepladder. You’d only moved in three weeks ago, and yet, the little radio you always put on to work to kept churning out the same story consistently – the string of disappearances in town that seemed to be getting more and more frequent.  

It would seem it was the town with skeletons in the closet, not your precious new home. The estate agent failed to mention that one…

When you first heard about it, you’d made sure the house was secure, with locks on the windows, every entrance bolted and sturdy. Being so far outside of town, you weren’t particularly worried since you rarely ventured from your home, particularly not at night when most of these disappearances seemed to have taken place. But it didn’t hurt to be safe...

Still, the thought that there may be someone out there snatching people for God only knows what purpose was a little unsettling. You could only hope the sheriff would do his job and catch whoever was behind the crimes soon – but it had already been nine months… All you could do was lay low, stay as far away from the potential risks of heading into town alone in the dark.

As the lunchtime bulletin ended, the radio began to play one of the top 40 songs you’d heard at least three times already today. Whilst it was repetitive, you’d learned the words, and found yourself singing along as you scraped at patches of wallpaper residue with your little scraping tool. You lost yourself to easily in the renovation tasks, the monotony allowing for your brain to whisk you away to distant worlds, like shooting your own music videos to the songs as you sang along.

Drifting so far off into your own thoughts is probably the reason you hadn’t realised the radio had actually cut out completely, and it was just you singing and the sound of the metal scraper to fill the silence… The batteries had died.

“Ah, shit…” you mumbled to yourself, stepping off the ladder and reaching for the radio you’d placed on the window sill. Upon closer inspection, you made the definite conclusion that it was in fact the batteries, and sighed in annoyance. Of all the things you didn’t think you’d need for a while at least, you would now have to rummage around in the unemptied moving boxes that were still stockpiled in the dining room, filled with ‘random crap’ from your ‘random crap’ drawers – the drawers every home has… You just hadn’t renovated enough of the kitchen to have a ‘random crap’ drawer yet.

Digging through the boxes, you pulled a tape measure, a pack of four highlighters with two missing, six bank statements dated four years ago and a set of tiny little wrenches from the collection, until finally, you found a pack of unopened batteries at the bottom of the box.

You fumbled with them, rushing to get them out and replace the dead ones in the radio so you could get your music back and get back to work. Just as you pushed the second battery in, the radio roared to life again, startling you with a sudden gasp. Your heart raced in your chest as you chuckled at yourself, laughing at how stupid you’d been to have forgotten to turn it off before you pushed the new batteries in.

But a sudden and much more frightening crash from beneath you had you jumping again within seconds, your grip on the radio faltering as it flew to the ground, the new batteries flying out at the impact and drenching the room in silence again.

Your head flew immediately to the old door to your left, the one that led beneath the house to the basement…

You don’t know how long you stared at it, your heart rate never calming down as your mind raced with scenarios. An animal? Old house falling apart? Ghost? Psycho killer from town? You had no idea what to think.

But you lived alone. No noise should be coming from down in the damn basement.

You stared for so long, you began to question if you’d heard anything at all. Perhaps your mind was playing tricks on you. But with a mental kick up the arse and a quick shake of the head to rid yourself of the fear, you marched over to the door to investigate like every stupid final girl in every horror movie you’d ever seen.

When you pulled on the string light, it buzzed and flickered before settling on a barely-there orange glow. Thankfully, it didn’t matter so much, the small windows in the house’s foundations letting in just enough light to deem the room visible. You could smell the must as you stepped down the wooden stairs, creaking under your feet as if some obnoxious special effects guy was dubbing the scene.

The movers had moved some of the restorable furniture you’d asked them to keep down here, stacking it in a far corner for you to come back to when you’d sorted the main structure and décor of the house. They were caked in a thick layer of dust, fingerprints from the movers clearly visible.

But nothing looked like it had fallen, there wasn’t anything broken or toppled over on the floor at all. The bang you’d heard had no source, that you could see. Even the cellar doors that led to the yard out back were still chained and bolted shut – you couldn’t blame it on a gust of wind, and upon first inspection, there was no sign of an animal somehow making its way inside either.

But to be sure, you walked through the clear space in the centre of the basement and over to the furniture pile of display cabinets, side tables, some chairs and a wardrobe you’d had moved from the master bedroom. It was one of your favourite pieces, that wardrobe. You planned to only clean it up and revarnish it, matching the ornate wood of the bed that had been kept pristine and you now used as your own. Even the mirrors on the door – oval shaped with dark ivy carved into the edges – were in fantastic condition. No scratches, just caked in a layer of dust like the rest.

A closer look proved there were no animals in the basement, no rodents or critters to try and ferry back outside. But what you did notice were the fingerprints on the brass handles of the wardrobe. Perhaps the movers had peaked inside – you hadn’t when you viewed the place. Maybe there were some old clothes still left behind from another decade?

Curiosity got the best of you, and you opened the door with a shriek of its hinges to find… nothing. The wardrobe was empty save for a few wire hangers that jingled with the opening of the door, and another layer of dust, albeit thinner, on the low shelf inside. But the dust was disturbed…

In the centre, there was a rectangle in the dust, as if it had been carefully wiped clean with absolute precision… It was about the size of a shoe box, but the dark grain of the wood stood out around the greyed and dulled wood surrounding it. Something had been in there for years, and had been removed…

Instantly, you blamed the movers. They’d gone nosing around and taken something they thought was valuable? Oh hell no. It got your back up immediately… You’d trusted these people, and they’d stolen from you? They’d be getting a phone call later.

Now pissed, you shut the door to the wardrobe a little harder than perhaps you should, the bang that sounded ricocheting off the stone walls of the basement.

That sounded like what you’d heard from upstairs.

You brushed it off, thinking nothing of it and instead looking up into the oval mirror of the door to check you’d left no damage to it.

But then you saw him. A man, in the dusty reflection standing in the far corner, the darkest spot of the basement. You could only see an outline, a silhouette. But one of his eyes seemed to gleam brighter than the other, the light perhaps hitting it just right. He was glaring at you, watching you intently in the dull reflection…

You shrieked, spinning in your place and slamming your back into the wardrobe behind you. Your chest heaved in panic, heart racing and breaths coming short and fast while your eyes searched the dimly lit corner and found nothing.

There was no man stood in the corner, nothing at all in fact. You were completely alone, your mind playing havoc on you in your heightened state of anxiety and anger. Even now, your heart was still hammering away, your lungs just beginning to regulate your breathing.

You straightened yourself up and wiped at your clothes that collected dust from the wardrobe when you’d slammed into it.

“Dumbass,” you mumbled to yourself, heading back upstairs quickly and slamming the basement door. You tried your best to shake off the anxiety, putting your batteries back into your radio and rushing back to the master bedroom to continue with the wallpaper scraping in the hopes it might put your mind back at ease. But for the rest of the day, you felt an anxiety you couldn’t shift, as if there truly was a man in the corner of every room you entered, glaring at you from the shadows.

It took a few days to get all the paper and residue off the walls in the master bedroom, careful not to mess with the panelling you wanted to sand down and keep as part of the décor. But for now, you could finally get onto stripping the paper in one of the other bedrooms, hoping to strip all of the paper from the upstairs in one go before getting around to sanding and replacing any panelling so you wouldn’t be spreading the dust into rooms you’d already finished and cleaned. There was method in your madness – strip everything down, sand, then clean.

The next biggest room upstairs had no furniture in it and was in the worst state, having been the room with the most extensive damage to the flooring and structural integrity. Builders had to replace the entire floor, and so had removed everything to do so. Apparently a leak in the roof – now fixed, of course – had caused irreparable water damage to the far corner, where they’d also removed the mouldy panelling and cleaned the remaining black mould properly and safely.

But now the rest of the room needed its paper stripped, so that’s where you found yourself. Your little radio blared the same station as always as you scraped away at the paper, making your way along the walls. It came off easier than the master bedroom, the damp of the room helping to already ease the adhesive from the plaster beneath.

As you moved to a section of the wall near the window, placing the stepladder on the floorboard, you heard one rattle beneath it. Having had the entire floor replaced, you’d assumed that every floorboard would be secured down. Perhaps the builders had missed one, but a few nails and you could fix that. So you moved the stepladder out of the way and crouched to inspect the plank that wobbled.

It had the holes in it where the nails should have been, and yet, there were no nails to hold it down… It was as if it had been secured and then pulled up again, except you couldn’t figure out why.

Curiosity got the best of you, and you pushed on one end of it to lift it from the structured beams beneath it. It opened up to a crawl space filled with fresh insulation and piping beneath the room. But when you pulled out your phone to flick on the flashlight, you noticed a rather out of place looking jewellery box had been hidden just to one side of the loose floorboard.

Instinct overruled you and you reached for it, pulling it from under the floorboard and wiping the dust from the top of it. It was a beautiful jewellery box, made of dark wood with an intricate baroque pattern carved into it and filled with some kind of gold resin. It had no lock on it, only a hook to keep its lid closed.

It made no sense to you… Why would this be under the floorboards when the floor was so new? Where had it come from? Should you open it?

And then your brain connected the dots. This box was the same shape, and a similar size to the disturbed dust inside the wardrobe in the basement. This had come from the wardrobe…

Logically, you concocted a story that maybe one of the builders had found it and wanted to hide it, come back for it later but forgot. But if they knew it was of value, surely they wouldn’t have forgotten it? And that patch in the wardrobe seemed too fresh, too pristine… Still, you had no other logical answer. You refused to believe it had magically found its way up from the basement and under the floorboards by itself – or even more horrifyingly, at the hands of someone else.

But you had to open it, right? You had to see what was inside, to see why someone would want to hide such a pretty little box at all. So you flicked the hook open, and slowly opened up the jewellery box…

You’d have to say you were disappointed. There were things in here, but nothing that screamed value at you, more like cheap and random items. There were some cuff links that you thought may have been silver, but were only sterling silver; a costume jewellery bracelet made of plastic pearls; a lipstick, worn down to within an inch of its life in a deep red shade; various little knick-knacks that together made absolutely no sense at all. The only thing that stood out to you as remotely unusual, was a watch.

This watch looked ordinary, something you’d pick up for cheap. It was broken, the glass cracked and the time clearly not moving on from 11:06 on the day it broke. It wasn’t branded, the clock face not diamond-incrusted or made of any real precious materials. But just under where the hands connected in the centre was a tiny little rotating set of numbers for a date, reading as 19/03/24 – just over a week ago. The watch had stopped working just over a week ago.

You couldn’t entertain this idea any longer. You stuffed the watch back into the box, slamming the lid closed and putting it back under the floorboards in the hope it might poof itself out of existence. You had to be imagining things, this wasn’t real. First, hearing noises down in the basement. Then, seeing the reflection of a man in the wardrobe mirror, only for him to disappear when you turned around. Now, finding a box of trinkets in the floorboards with items that were completely out of place for the time period of the old house.

You were being ridiculous, making up things that didn’t exist and had no significance at all. This must have been left by a builder, the battery being the reason it stopped, not the crack in the glass. There was just no way. No one had been by the house since you moved in besides the postman, and even he had quickly stuffed the mail into the mailbox at the end of your drive and run off quickly every time you caught him.

A creak in the floorboards in the hallway snapped you from your racing conspiracies, igniting your fight or flight response much like the noise in the basement the other day. This time you didn’t freeze, you stood up quickly and ran to the doorway to see if you could catch whatever was making the noise.

There he was again.

The same silhouette, a man stood in the hallway, backlit from the large window behind him and the sun streaming in through it. You couldn’t see his face properly, left in shadow but you could see those same eyes, glaring at you, watching to see if you would make a move…

Anger flared inside you, thinking you had an intruder in your home. You weren’t one to back down from a fight or go quietly. If this man was skulking around your house in broad fucking daylight, you were going to confront him.

“HEY! Who the fuck are you?!” you yelled from the doorway, “GET OUT OF MY HOUSE!”

The silhouette said nothing, instead stepping to the right through the door to your master bedroom. Without a second thought you ran towards the open doorway, grabbing the scraper from the floor where you’d set it down earlier as some kind of precautionary weapon.

“I said, get out of my-“ you stopped, frozen in fear. You couldn’t believe what you were seeing, confusion replacing the rage inside you.

Nothing.

There was nobody in here. And you made damn sure to check… No one behind the door, no one in the en-suite, no one under the bed… No one.

You were losing your mind. You had to be. Perhaps you had spent too long alone in this old house, maybe you needed to socialise, head into town and meet some real people instead of chasing shadows. This wasn’t healthy, all this obsessive renovation work. This was your brain telling you you needed a break, right? It had to be that, because you could come up with no sound, logical explanation as to why you were seeing a shadow man roaming around your house other than madness. None of this was really happening, this was simply a descent into insanity caused by too much isolation.

At least, that’s what you told yourself to quiet the pounding heartbeat in your ears as the fear crept its way inside, burrowing deeper with every strange happening you seemed to experience.

A day off was all you’d needed, time out of the house to escape the need to be working, to essentially touch some grass and speak to another actual human being besides the shadow you’d conjured in your head. You’d gone into town, done some shopping, sat in a local coffee shop… You’d met a lovely older woman in there – Amelie, a widow and life-long resident – who’d welcomed you to town, so excited to have a fresh and pretty face to say hello to.

Although, she had warned you to head home before the sun set… That you should never walk alone in the evenings, and should lock your doors and windows at night.

“He likes the younger ones,” she’d told you. “I’m no good, you see… He likes them young.”

That had chilled you to the bone… Perhaps the mad ramblings of a woman hitting senility, but already on edge after the last few days at home, it seemed to strike a nerve. But nothing could have prepared you for the look on her face when she’d asked her where in town you had moved into, and you divulged it was the old farmhouse on the outskirts.

Her cheeks had sagged, smile dropping instantly. She shifted in the chair she’d taken at your table, straightening out the skirt of her dress over her knees and avoiding eye contact. And then she clutched her necklace in her fist – a gold crucifix – as she reached to take yours in her other hand.

“You must protect yourself, yes? That house… Something is there. You must be careful,” she told you, her voice as stern as she could make it to hide the tremble of fear.

“I-I’m okay, really… It just looks old, it’s overgrown and falling apart but I’m working on-“

“No!” she yelled, turning the heads of other patrons in the coffee shop. Her grip on your hand squeezed tighter, her nails digging into your hand painfully. “You should leave, before it’s too late. Such a pretty young thing, you shouldn’t be there…”

You pried her bony, arthritic fingers from around your hand and gently held hers in both of yours.

“I’m okay, Amelie. Please, don’t worry…” you comforted her, but she seemed dissatisfied, her eyes wide as she conceded.

That entire interaction had sat with you for the rest of the day as you’d wandered through the local farmer’s market, picking up fresh vegetables to turn into a casserole for one tonight. It shouldn’t have unnerved you the way it did, such an elderly woman was clearly suffering the effects of an ageing mind and yet, with the experiences of the last few days? Her warning unnerved you.

You headed home long before sunset, and locked the doors and windows like she’d told you to. Did it make you feel any better? Absolutely not… But as you pottered around in the kitchen making the casserole you’d planned, slowly the anxiety started to ease, helped mostly by the music on your little radio.

You ate in peace, scrolling through your phone while you tapped your foot on the tiled floor of the kitchen. You didn’t mind these lonely evenings so much, having grown tired of the bustling city long ago. These days, the quiet of your own company was quite welcome, easily sinking into your own little world.

Even as you stood at the sink, scrubbing at the dishes, you were in your own world, humming along to another overplayed song you’d heard time and time again. You’d find yourself staring out the window in front of you at the sunset, the sky painted pinks and oranges and casting a tranquil glow over the little graveyard out back. Dusk was quickly approaching, the night drawing in as you cleaned.

Just as you placed your plate on the drying rack beside you, you looked out again at the graves, now like silhouettes as the sky turned to a deeper shade of bluey purple. But your heart dropped, every hair on your body standing on end.

The shadow figure. The same shadow figure… Stood out by the graves, looking down at them with its back to you. He seemed to be wearing the same thing as last time you spotted him; slacks, a black coat made of heavy wool that just passed his knees. He was just standing, staring…

You froze in place, watching… You felt paralysed, like you’d spotted a large spider on the wall, staring at it to make sure it didn’t move out of sight because losing it was worse than staring in fear.

It didn’t move, just standing there, staring down.

A rush of anger hit you out of nowhere – this fucker was trespassing on your property, scaring you stupid. You’d locked this prick out when you’d come home, and so he thought it was okay to skulk around your land, trying to frighten you?

Fuck that. No. Enough of this.

You wiped your hands on the dish towel to the side, instinctively reaching for the biggest knife in your knife block on the counter before running to the back door. You unbolted the top and bottom, and ran out into the evening with a surge of adrenaline.

“HEY!” you yelled, like you had when you’d seen him in your hallway, “WHAT THE FUCK DO YOU THINK YOU’RE DOING?!”

The figure didn’t move, still staring down as you approached quickly from behind. You stayed back a few feet, clutching the knife in your hand and ready to use it should this fucker try anything…

“Answer me…” your voice shook with fear, no matter how hard you tried to keep it steady and strong. “What the fuck do you think you’re doing on my land?”

A dark chuckle… The shoulders of the figure shook with his laugh, and it only pissed you off more.

“Your land? Interesting…” the figure muttered, his voice thick with a heavy Italian accent and gruff like he hadn’t spoken aloud in decades.

“I-I’ll call the cops…” you threatened, “just leave and no one gets hurt.”

His head cocked up at that, turning to look over his shoulder. For the first time, you got a small glimpse at his face, and the eye that gleamed brighter than it should. He seemed to be smirking, as if this situation was somehow funny to him.

“You would hurt me, cara mio?” he teased, his eyes flitting down to the knife you held extended towards him. “I did not have you pegged for a violent woman.”

It caught you off guard, the way he spoke to you. Was he trying to belittle you? Make you question your own self-defense to weaken you? You wouldn’t let that happen.

“What are you doing here?” you asked him defiantly, ignoring his comments and still wielding the knife.

“Paying my respects,” he grumbled, as if he were annoyed by an intrusive question.

“Th-this is my property, and you need to leave. I’ve seen you in my house, and you need to go before I call the cops,” you repeated yourself, your voice shaking.

“Why did you buy this house?” he asked, frustratingly ignoring your warnings.

“None of your business-“

“It is my business,” he snapped, “This house belonged to my family,” he span on the spot, finally facing you. His expression was intimidating, his eyes – now visibly different colours – were boring into you, just begging you to try something. “These are their graves. This is their house. It does not, and will never, belong to you.”

“Well you might want to tell the bank that, Mr, uh…” his name escaped you, forgetting the surname that you’d uncovered weeks ago on the graves behind him.

“Emeritus,” he smiled sadistically. “Terzo Emeritus, and this house is mine.”

He took a step closer to you, and naturally you stepped back in fear. The grip on the knife readjusted with the second step he took, readying yourself to use it should you need to.

“But a pretty thing like you? I’m willing to share…”

“Don’t make another move…” you jabbed the knife forward a little, raising your voice in an attempt to appear threatening. “I know there’s some creep going around town, snatching people… And now you’re here, in MY house, threatening me?”

“I think I’m the one being threatened, cara mio…”

“SHUT UP!” you yelled. “Leave, now. Or I will call the fucking police.”

His hands, encased in leather gloves, shot up in a defensive pose, his smile widening sickeningly. He stopped approaching, but his morbidly beautiful eyes slowly scanned you from head to toe, taking you in, analysing. For a moment, you were locked in a stalemate, staring each other down. You thought maybe he was sizing you up, waiting for the opportune moment to strike like a predator hunting its prey.   

But instead of pouncing like you’d expected, he turned back around and knelt down before the graves.

“Penso che forse lei non è così affezionato a me come io sono di lei, non siete d'accordo? (I think maybe she is not as fond of me as I am of her, don’t you agree?)” he mumbled, as if the dead could hear every word. “Non temere, non lascerò che questa bellezza mi scaccia, i miei fratelli. Questa è casa nostra e imparerà a godere della mia compagnia. (Fear not, I will not let this beauty drive me away, my brothers. This is our house, and she will learn to enjoy my company.)”

“W-what did you say?” you stuttered, still wielding the knife. He looked briefly over his shoulder at you.

“Non vedevo tanta bellezza da più di un secolo, (I haven’t seen such beauty in over a century,)” he spoke to the graves again. “Non dal mio esilio e ritorno. (not since my exile and return.)”

You were growing more and more frustrated as he spoke his mother tongue to thin air, waiting for him to do something – even if that something were to force you to defend yourself. This was just… bizarre.

He stood again, kissing the tips of his gloves and pressing them to each headstone, save for one on the end. Why he missed that one, you weren’t sure, but you couldn’t focus on that right now. He seemed to be saying a goodbye, as if he were actually going to leave upon your request.

“Until next time, bella cosa (pretty thing),” he bowed his head a little and began to walk towards you, giving you a wide berth but keeping his eyes trained on you at all times. You figured he was simply making sure you didn’t try to stab him as he passed, walking himself out of the gates of your land and a little ways down the street before he turned back to you, and blew you a slow, calculated flying kiss.

As he continued to walk away down the lane that stretched towards town, you quickly glanced back at the graves, noting now that the names did indeed all share a common family name.

Primo Emeritus. Secondo Emeritus. Copia Emeritus. Terzo Emeritus.

Your eyes widened. You were sure that was the name he just told you belonged to him? That wasn’t possible… Such an unusual name, and he’d made no mention of being a ‘Terzo Junior’, or ‘Terzo the second’. And it was the only grave he didn’t plant his kiss to…

You span around in the grass beneath your feet, looking out down the lane you’d just seen him walking down and yet, he was nowhere to be seen. He wasn’t in the fields that lined the lane into town, and the road stretched with no bends for at least two miles, no obstructions at all. You should be able to still see him walking, running even if he had chosen to. He hadn’t had time to vanish like he had, in mere seconds.

Your head whipped back to the grave – his grave? – before you shook your head of the nonsense that he might well be some kind of spirit who can appear or disappear in the blink of an eye. These ‘occurrences’ were nothing more than fuel for a spooky story around a campfire. None of this was true, you’d just… lost sight of him, or misjudged the view of the road. Something, anything, had to explain this away.

But it didn’t stop you from bolting back through the garden and into the kitchen, slamming the door behind you with the knife still in hand and bolting the door shut, heart thumping in your ears.

You slept with that knife under your mattress that night.

His face haunted you, both day and night. No matter what you did, or how you tried to refocus your mind, to fixate on only your renovations, you couldn’t shake the feeling of being watched. In the few days since the incident by the graves, you were questioning your sanity more than ever.

Had that even been real? Was he real? He couldn’t possibly be… The way he disappeared in an instant every time you saw him led you only to the conclusion that you’d lost your mind, officially. You must have concocted this spectre after seeing his name on the grave when you’d cleared the landscaping around them. You told yourself that over and over again.

That became harder to do though, when you’d spot him out by the graves again not even a week after the first time. You’d been installing some small curtains to the window by the kitchen sink for you to hide the site from view when you’d spooked yourself at the mere thought of that night, and yet there he was again.

You stared in shock, frozen and motionless, as he turned his head towards the house, looking it up and down, before his gaze settled on you in the window. He raised his hand, but before he could gesture a wave at you, you shut the new curtains and obscured his view, darting out of the kitchen and hiding in the dining room still full of packed boxes.

Your heart pounded as it always did when your imagination ran away with you and spooked you like this. You shook your head, told yourself to snap the fuck out of it.

But then you saw him every evening.

Always by the graves, always turning to wave at you, no matter from which window you were watching him from. You did your best to hide, to ignore it and tell yourself he wasn’t real. You just had to keep going, to continue your work and maybe find a good psychologist in town one of these days.

This plan of wilful ignorance was barely working, but what else could you do? Giving this apparition any kind of attention would surely only make it worse, whether he was a figment of your imagination or a genuine ghost from the past.

Ignoring him was hard. There was such a large part of you that wanted more information about him, to learn where he’d come from, why he haunted you. He was intriguing, if terrifying. The face that followed your dreams, both day and night, was starting to become all too familiar, all too comfortable. If it weren’t for that ghostly white eye of his, he’d have quite a charming face. His glare wouldn’t seem so dark if it wasn’t pierced by the white glow, and perhaps he wouldn’t be so threatening… Home invasion and grave haunting aside.

Still, you did your best to continue as normal. The renovations continued, and before long you had stripped every room upstairs of the aged and withered wallpaper that desperately needed replacing. Finally, you could start decorating to your own tastes – starting with your bedroom.

After a trip to the nearest hardware store, and a delivery of wooden slats, you got busy creating the wainscoting that was to run along the bottom three feet of the wall in your bedroom. The idea was to panel it, and then paint everything a beautiful deep shade of royal purple. The hardwood floor was going to be stained a dark shade throughout the entire upstairs, but you’d managed to source a stunning Persian rug in a purple that matched the aesthetic you were hoping for. The furniture – the items you’d had moved to the basement – were already perfect for the room, matching the bed that had also been left behind. You’d chosen gold metal accents to replace the handles on the wardrobe and chest of drawers, and sourced lamps and trinkets in the same gold to match.

After no longer than a week, you’d completed the room with a mix and match of modern and Victorian gothic aesthetics. Frankly, it looked like a Pinterest board – but it was so inherently you.

When you’d laid the finishing touches to the room, you stood in the middle of it, proudly looking around with a wide grin on your face at the beautifully finished space. That estate agent couldn’t see the potential of this house, but you had the second you stepped foot inside. And whilst it was only one room, the rest of the house still just the bare skeletal bones of a home, this was a huge victory.

“I like what you’ve done with my bedroom, bella cosa (pretty thing).”

Your body stiffened at the sound of his voice, coming from the doorway behind you. You squeezed your eyes shut, shaking your head and willing for the nightmare to stop. You hadn’t heard him, you were imagining it. You had to be.

Except, you heard footsteps behind you, on the hardwood floors. His shoes clacked with every step, slow and deliberate as if he was taking in his surrounding, inspecting your work. When you braved opening your eyes, that’s exactly what he was doing.

He really was here.

“Grazie for keeping my furniture, cara mio. I was always fond of it, and you’ve given it new life,” he said, ogling the wardrobe as he dragged his gloved fingertips along the edge of the wood.

“And purple, too…” he span on his heels to face you, a warm smile crossing his dark features, “My favourite colour.”

“How did you get in here?” you asked, voice shaking as you watched him look around the room.

“I told you, cara, this was my house. I know every entrance and exit there is,” his mismatched eyes settled on you again, “even the ones you don’t.”

He was lying. There were only three ways in or out of the house, and they were all locked – bolted, latched, even the cellar doors in the basement were chained shut.

“This is not your house,” you argued, spitting the words through grit teeth. “You need to leave. I will call the police.”

His eyes darkened again, a veil of threat overcoming him.

“And I told you, this has always been my house.”

You weighed your options. Your phone was on the kitchen counter downstairs; if you were fast enough, you could run down to it and out the back door before he caught you, calling the police as you ran along the road into town. If you didn’t fuck it up, you could even lock him in, taking the key from the back door and locking it shut behind you, leaving him gift wrapped for the cops.

You just had to be quick.

And you tried, you really did. You bolted out of the bedroom, running down the length of the long hall towards the top of the stairs. You hadn’t heard him behind you, his shoes making no noise behind you and so you imagined he’d been left stunned by your sudden departure, giving you a head start.

So you hadn’t expected a pair of large, strong hands to grip you by the tops of your arms at the top of the stairs, and slam your body into the wall. A sharp pain radiated up through your spine, but you cried out in fear more so than pain when you realised he’d trapped you, palms flat against the wall by your head and arms encasing you.

Instinct had you closing your eyes, squeezing them shut and waiting for the next blow, or for this nightmare to end. You could feel a cool breeze against your cheek as you turned your head away from the man trapping you, as if his breath were ice cold.

“Look at me, cara mio,” he ordered, his voice deep and slow. You whimpered beneath him, trying to plant yourself flat against the wall to get as far away from him as possible. “Per favore, I want to see you.”

You wanted to deny him, but his silence said he’d wait for an eternity until you did. And you didn’t want to find out just how aggressive he could be, if given the chance. So slowly, you opened your eyes, looking at him through your peripheral vision before you turned your head ever so slightly.

His face was so close to yours, hovering above you. His eyes flickered across your features, like he was looking for something, or maybe mapping every feature and committing it to his memory for some nefarious reason.

This close to him, you couldn’t stop yourself from doing the same… You avoided his eyes, noting instead how his skin seemed pale for an Italian man, but soft and smooth without a single imperfection. His jawline was chiselled, like you’d cut your palm if you tried to slap him. He had frown lines in his forehead that came with a life of frustration, yet forked lines from the outer corners of his eyes that came with a life of happiness; neither made him look haggard, yet showed he wasn’t quite as youthful as you.

Despite his pale complexion, his lips remained a soft pink. They were full, parted as you both silently examined each other up close. That breeze you felt was most definitely his breath, which you’d expected to be warmer but given the situation, perhaps it was your fear adding to the chill.

Running out of features to scan, you landed on his eyes; the eyes that haunted you more than any you’d seen. At first glance, the colour mismatch was disconcerting. It would put anybody on edge, perhaps make them wonder if he’d fallen victim to some kind of accident or birth defect but the more you stared, the more you fell into them. You couldn’t place why, but they seemed older than the rest of his features, holding more wisdom than you might have expected.

“Are you real?” you asked him, logic and reason battling against the very real fear that you were imagining him, that he was some kind of spirit that haunted his family home you’d never be rid of. But you’d felt him. His hands had been the ones to throw you against this wall, his body was imposing on yours as he trapped you. He was solid, flesh and blood. But there was an innate and visceral fear that something was wrong.

At your question, his eyes met yours, and his lips quirked into a playful smile.

“I am very real, cara mio,” he assured, taking his hand from beside your head and wrapping his gloved fingers around your wrist. He lifted your palm, gently laying it flat against his chest. “Can you not feel me?”

You could. He was solid, like you’d now discovered and you could feel his heartbeat beneath his shirt. Still, something felt wrong. He had no body heat like a normal living man through a simple cotton shirt should, and the heartbeat you felt was significantly slower than it should be.

“Who are you?” you whimpered, palm to his chest without even an attempt to remove it.

“I told you who I was. Terzo Emeritus.”

“J-junior?” you asked him. His brow creased in confusion, missing what you were asking entirely. “Terzo Junior? The grave, it… it says Terzo.”

Now he understood, sensing your confusion and chuckling lightly at it.

“Just Terzo,” he told you, gentle grip still on your wrist. You could pull your hand away if you tried, and yet, you kept it in place as if his own slow heartbeat was somehow reducing your own to a more comfortable pace.

You were at a loss for words now, brain running far too quickly to settle on something suitable to say to him. But at least now you had grown aware of your palm still settled on his chest, prompting you to rip it from his grip expecting him to put up some kind of resistance, to which you met none.

“What do you want from me?” you asked him, unable to tear your eyes from him in the same manner you’d torn your wrist from him.

“Perhaps only your company,” he shrugged slightly, raising an eyebrow in suggestion. “To exist with you, here.”

“This is my house…”

“Sí, so you keep saying.” A beat of silence passed as you thought of what he was truly asking, what that even meant.

“I want you to stay away from me,” you insisted, finding a shred of strength within you. Terzo took in a deep breath through his nose, letting it go as he studied you.

“I don’t think I can do that, cara mio,” he sighed. His admission had tears forming in your waterline, a new fear that you wouldn’t be able to shake this man’s seemingly growing obsession with you. All you wanted was peace, solitude and an escape but you’d fallen into a web, and the spider was crawling towards you agonisingly slowly.

You took a few deep breaths, each exhale shaky. You just wanted him to go, to leave you alone. Maybe this had been his house once before, but it was yours now, and he couldn’t stay here. He already seemed infatuated with you, if the way he looked at you now was anything to go by. His eyes drank you in like he was a starving man, and you were the ripest of fruits for him to devour.

“Please, I just want to be left alone…” you begged, tilting your head back against the wall and letting the tears fall as you squeezed your eyes shut, suppressing a sob in your chest.

Silence descended, and suddenly the weighted oppression of his presence vanished with a swift breeze. Even with your eyes shut, you could feel he wasn’t entrapping you anymore but when you opened them, you saw he wasn’t anywhere near you at all.

He’d vanished again, faster than a snap of your fingers.

And you were left wondering if any of that, once again, was real or a fantasy of your own making. You were so sure you felt a solid body, a real heartbeat. You weren’t a scientist, nor a paranormal specialist but you would assume if he was the spirit of the man buried in your back yard, you wouldn’t be able to feel him in such a way.

But now he had vanished, the feeling he left with you felt very much like an oppressive presence, a lingering energy. Now he left you with the anxiety of another visit without warning, another appearance to trick you into believing your delusions were true.

You expected to see him again.

Another week passed, a surface layer of anxiety lingering persistently. All you could do was focus your attention on your project, doing your absolute best to continue as normal. Now you had finished the master bedroom, you moved onto the upstairs bathroom, which had needed gutting and refitting.

You’d had a small team of plumbers in to replace the pipes through the house just as you had electricians to rewire the place before you’d moved in, and until now, all you’d had was the bare bones of a shiny new bathroom. You’d installed some counters with a new sink, the gold hardware matching around the bathroom. The marble top was a beautifully tasteful black with gold veins to match the black wood of the cabinets.

Even in here, you stuck to your darker aesthetic. The walls were painted a beautiful matte black, the floor tiled with black and white squares. It took you all week, two of those days on tiling alone. But it was something to focus on, a room that you knew would be frequently used and so needed to be finished now your bedroom was complete.

When it came to adding the finishing touches, it felt like the cherry on top of another beautifully made cake. Your house was quickly turning into a showroom, a place that could be featured in home renovation magazines had you been willing to open it up.

But already, you’d had one too many visitors in your home for your liking…

By the end of the week, you were exhausted – more so than usual. The anxiety of feeling watched, monitored, stalked was taking its toll on you, and you needed some respite. For all you knew, Terzo Emeritus could show up at any moment to frighten, repulse and excite you. It was weighing heavy, and your mind was just as spent as your body was.

As you headed to bed that evening, you allowed yourself some self-care in the bathroom you’d now finished. The point of renovating this house was to enjoy it, right? So why deny yourself that…

You filled the new clawfoot tub with hot water, brimming with bubbles and scents that had you falling into a state of total calm before you’d even sunk into it. Your tiny little radio joined you in the bathroom, tuned to a station that played nothing but classical, and on a bath shelf you’d bought you rested some candles, a book and a full glass of red wine to enjoy as you pampered yourself.

Sinking into the water, you relished in the feeling of being submerged in its warmth. Almost instantly, the tension in your shoulders melted away, eyes closing in bliss as your head slipped back to rest against the tub’s edge. You couldn’t help but let out a hum of satisfaction, the relief and pleasure accumulating in a soft moan.

As you let your body relax, a noise caught your attention; a floorboard, creaking just outside of the bathroom door. Your eyes shot open, your body reacting and freezing in place. However when you let your eyes roam over to the mirror above the bathroom sink, you saw him…

By force of habit, you’d left the bathroom door ajar, a small gap just large enough to be able to see that ghostly eye of his in the dim hallway, and the outline of him peeking through the door. Your heart rate hammered in your chest as it always did when you saw him, but you remained still. For now, he wasn’t making any kind of move, and he didn’t seem to be aware you had seen him.

But he was definitely there, watching you as you bathed. It was violating, invasive, perverse… And yet, you did nothing about it.

Instead, you sank further underneath the bubbles, reaching for your wine glass with your eyes trained on the mirror. You took a sip, relishing in the taste and releasing another satisfied moan as if putting on a damn show for him. What possessed you to do so, you had no idea, but he’d been tormenting your mind for weeks now – why couldn’t you do the same to him?

Reaching for your loofah, you dunked it under the water and sat upright, back exposed to him. You stretched your arm out, running the loofah along your skin in a slow and deliberate manner. You were careful to never expose yourself too much, but to tease with the expanse of pretty, bare skin to conjure enough suggestion in his mind that would leave a man desperate to see more.

When you ran the loofah up the length of your leg just above the water, you heard the floorboards creak again, like he was fidgeting on the other side of the door. You checked in the mirror to see if he was still there, and he most certainly was, but you were having the effect on him you hoped for.

Perhaps you stretched it out a little longer than necessary, running the loofah over your body more than needed but you were making your point. Your wicked little mind was ticking over, aware he could only see what you wanted him to; your shoulders and head above the bubbles from behind. Do you dare to cross the line…?

Perhaps the thrill of being watched was having an effect on you too, because you came to the conclusion that yes, you did dare to cross the line.

You lay back against the tub again, using the loofah now to run across your shoulders and down between the valley of your breasts, which the bubbles were barely covering in your relaxed position. You trailed the loofah further down, reaching over your stomach and between your legs.

Your breath hitched in your throat as you brushed the loofah over your core, now realising that washing yourself so intimately – and being watched while doing so – had aroused you more than you’d first thought. A flash of pleasure had you squeezing your eyes shut again, and you couldn’t stop yourself from grazing over your centre with added pressure, hips rocking in the water.

Before long, you abandoned the loofah all together, and from where he was stood, Terzo could see it float and bob up to the surface which had him drawing only one conclusion; you were definitely not just washing yourself.

You worked slowly, methodically. It had been so long since you’d let go like this, since you’d last touched yourself at all and you wanted to savour it, to enjoy it. You were in no rush, working your fingers in gentle and slow circles over your clit under the water. The moans that you let slip weren’t at all restrained or controlled; for all you knew, you were alone, right? So why would you hold back?

 It was impossible not to keep checking the mirror, to make sure he was still there and every time, he was. You couldn’t help but let your imagination run away with you, picturing him entering the room, kneeling down beside the tub and reaching his hand between your legs for you. You pictured him taking you from the bathroom, into the bedroom and having his way with you, dark, handsome and brooding as he always had been.

You imagined his hands beneath his gloves, his bare fingertips tracing patterns into your skin, his full lips trailing kisses down your still wet body. What did he look like under those layers of his? How would he feel under your own fingertips? How would he feel inside you?

But Terzo made no such move. Instead, he watched silently from the shadows, and each time you caught that glimpse of him your hips bucked towards your hand until eventually, you couldn’t hold back anymore and allowed yourself to fall over the precipice.

Your orgasm was powerful, thanks to not only the lack of self love recently, but also, the arousal of becoming an exhibitionist. It rippled through your body like the water around you, and had you crying out wordlessly as you sank further into the water up to your chin. You hadn’t felt so good in a long time, and it worked perfectly to relieve the remainder of that tension in your body.

As you came down from the orgasm, you dared to glance back at the mirror only to find that he’d vanished. Another little disappearing act, only this time, you found yourself free of the anxiety that usually came with that, and instead smug with the knowledge you might have got one over on him for a change. You’d teased him to a point that he couldn’t tear his eyes from you until it was over, and for a moment you felt truly powerful. At least, if he were real… and not a fantasy you’d concocted for yourself. There was still the very real possibility that all of this was just your own madness and loneliness, and you were just now starting to lean into the delusions as a form of self-preservation.

For a little while longer, you stayed put in the tub, enjoying your book, the rest of your wine and the music in the background. Of course, you kept checking on the mirror to see if maybe he’d return for another look, but nothing. It was twisted, the way your stomach drooped in disappointment each time, but you brushed it off. You were sure before long, you would see him again – whether real or fictional.

Once you had finished in the bathroom, draining the tub and rinsing the suds away, you floated back into your bedroom wrapped in a bathrobe and ready to sink into bed with your book. You pottered around, changing into some pyjamas and crawling under the sheets when a glimpse of colour caught the light beside your bed, earning your attention.

Hanging from your bedside lamp was a pendant, and most certainly not one of yours. They were stored in a jewellery box atop the dresser, not hung on display like this… but it was beautiful, and you reached over to lay the charm in your palm and inspect it properly.

It was simple, yet elegant. The charm was shaped like a water drop, except the stone was purple; perhaps amethyst or a rarer sapphire but it caught the light exceptionally. Surrounding it, were smaller stones that resembled diamonds, but your knowledge of precious stones couldn’t confirm whether they were in fact real, or if this were costume jewellery. It didn’t matter though, it was beautiful as it was, sparkling under your bedside lamp.

You had no idea how it got here, but you could hazard a guess. It had been left for you like a gift, delicately placed in a position that would get your attention. There was only one person it could have come from, and as you played with the unusual pendant under the light, you began to realise that maybe he wasn’t the figment of your imagination you were trying to pass him off as…

The next morning, you had a revived energy, a spring in your step from a decent night’s sleep. The time spent on self care seemed to do the job, relieving the stress enough for you to be ready to tackle the downstairs living room next. Truthfully, your new found vigour may have also had something to do with a large part of you giving in to the idea that Terzo was not a fantasy, he’d been very real this whole time.

You still had no idea who he was, or how he was a real person. You were beginning to think that perhaps spirits did walk the earth, just by how he seemed to appear and disappear on a dime. But you remembered the heartbeat, the solid chest under your palm…

There were so many questions. Who was he? A descendant of the family this house once belonged to, and rested in your garden? How does he keep getting in? He mentioned entrances you might not know about, but you’d searched thoroughly, or so you thought. Was he obsessed with you? Stalking you?

Was he dangerous?

His behaviour was most definitely shady – people don’t just come and go in other people’s homes as they please. But you’d never reported him, no matter how much you’d threatened it. To begin with you’d hoped the threat of calling the cops would be enough to deter him, but he always came back. And at every opportunity, he could have done something to hurt you, yet never did. Even last night, you were in a completely vulnerable position. And whilst peeping on you in the bath was absolutely a violation and a crime in itself, all he did was watch. And you let him.

His existence was confusing, but you’d surrendered to the notion that he did in fact exist; and honestly, that in itself was quite freeing. It felt like some kind of weight had lifted, and it made beginning work on the living room easier to stomach.

This room had suffered in the years the house sat in decay. The old windows had made way for black mould to grow around it, and whilst you’d had the windows replaced since, the mould was still present. Your first job was to clean the walls and potentially replace some of the floorboards, if the moisture had taken hold of the wood.

Armed with a bucket of diluted bleach and a sponge, you got to work scrubbing at the walls and the large window sill that you were planning to convert into a cosy nook; a perfect place to sit and watch the world go by, book in hand. Your little radio sat on the mantelpiece of the stunning fireplace you were going to bring back to life, blaring out the same cycle of tunes you were used to now you’d tuned it back from the classical of last night.

You let yourself zone out as you scrubbed at the mould, singing along to the radio now you knew most of the songs blaring from it. It was a wonder you weren’t sick of them yet, but you still hadn’t got around to unpacking your record player that was supposed to have a home in this particular room. First, you had to finish it though, of course.

As one song ended, the radio host announced a lunchtime bulletin. By this time you were only half listening, fixated on the satisfying cleaning job.

“It’s 1pm, you’re listening to 108.3fm – here’s your lunchtime bulletin. Police have made a shocking discovery after the disappearance of 25 year old Amanda Riley just three days ago.”

Your ears perked up at the news, now getting your attention. Another one? This was concerning, terrifying even. And now they’d made a discovery?

“Human remains were discovered just outside of town in a wooded area yesterday, which police have now confirmed are that of Amanda. Family members formally identified the body, and police have given a statement to locals urging caution and vigilance. Sheriff Ansel had this to say…

“‘We believe Ms. Riley’s murder to be connected to the string of disappearances in the area in the last few months. The victim was found with all her personal belongings still on her person, including wallet, cash, ID and mobile phone, however when the family came to formally identify the body, they noted that the only thing taken from her was her unusual pendant…’”

Your blood turned cold. The hand still scrubbing at the wall froze in place, and slowly, you turned to look at the radio as if it was speaking directly to you.

“‘The pendant is recognisable as a purple amethyst in a teardrop shape, surrounded by smaller white diamonds. While the item is valuable, we believe that the killer may have taken such a personal item as a trophy, which could be part of their M.O. Still, we are urging the public to please keep an eye out to see if we can trace this item, either in pawn shops or perhaps being sold online. We ask that you not panic, and please get in touch if you note anything suspicious. Thank you.’”

Your hand dropped the sponge back into the bucket of diluted bleach, drifting up to your chest where that very same pendant was sat against your skin. You’d put it on that morning, barely even thinking about it, just because you liked it.

But he’d given it to you. Left it out in the open for you, like he was proud of it. He’d given you a dead girl’s fucking necklace. And there was only one way he could have got it…

You stood up, running into the kitchen and colliding with the sink before your body displayed it’s disgust by vomiting violently. All those unanswered questions, and yet, one of them had been answered.

Who was he? A murderer.

As you coughed and spluttered your breakfast into the sink, your mind raced. She wasn’t the only missing person, just the first body to have been found. There were others. So many others, for nine months. Thirteen missing people, one of which found dead with this fucking necklace missing.

You felt dizzy, like a wave of vertigo hit you in an instant. You hobbled over to the fridge, clutching at the kitchen counter to keep yourself steady and rooting around for a bottle of water. Your hands shook as you unscrewed the lid, taking a sip to rinse out your mouth as you stumbled back to the sink to spit. You took another sip, this time swallowing and trying your best to focus on the sensation of the cool water trickling down your throat. But your head was too busy.

Trophies. He was taking trophies? Why? This sick bastard must enjoy it, he must relish in his kills, wanting something to remember each one by. What else had he taken…? And then you remembered.

The box under the floorboards.

You slammed the water bottle down on the side, a jet propelling out onto the work surface from the force. Before you knew it your feet were moving of their own accord, up the stairs and down the hall. You were unsteady, tripping into the walls as you walked. You needed to know, but you didn’t want to.

Stumbling into the bare room, you fell to your knees with a hard smack where the floorboard was loose. Shaking hands lifted the plank, reaching underneath to check the box was still there; it was. You pulled it from its hiding place setting it down on the floor while you racked up the courage to open it again.

In one quick motion, you unlocked the latch and flung the lid open like ripping off a band aid. All the items were still there, just the way you’d left them, including the watch that had made you question them in the first place. It looked like it could have been vintage, save for the date wound to March of this year.

You looked at the collection of random items; the watch, the cuff links, the old red lipstick, the cheap bracelet, a skeleton key, a tiny used bottle of perfume, a red comb, an old butterfly hairpin, a daisy pin badge, a rusty swiss army knife, a fountain pen and a vintage zippo lighter.

Twelve items.

With the necklace, that made thirteen. Thirteen items. Thirteen victims. Thirteen trophies.

“I should have hidden them better, eh?”

The sound of his voice had your body stiffening in fear, skin instantly peppered with goosebumps. You hadn’t even begun to think about confronting him or having to see him. You weren’t sure what you were going to do yet, but you’d have hoped to have time to calm yourself down and think rationally about your options.

But you were going to have to do this ad-hoc.

“I don’t often make mistakes, bella cosa, but when I do… They haunt me. I suppose my kindness is coming back to bite me on the culo (ass).”

He sounded surprisingly calm for a man who’d just been found out to be a serial killer. It unnerved you, and no part of you could figure out his next move. You were a sitting duck.

Slowly, and carefully, you stood up, turning around to look at him. Part of you worried if you startled him with sudden movement, he might strike like any predator would its prey.

He was stood in the doorway, leaning up against the wood with his hands buried in the pockets of his slacks, coat pushed back behind them. He looked far too casual, his face hinting at neither anger nor humour – nowhere on the emotional spectrum.

“Kindness?” you asked, ruminating over his use of the word. “There’s no kindness in what you’ve done.” Perhaps it was dangerous to speak so ill of the murderer in front of you, but you couldn’t help yourself.

His neutral expression darkened in a warning glare, his chin tipping up so he was looking down on you, adding to his intimidating aura.

“Not everybody deserves kindness, cara mio. Some deserve far less,” he challenged, pushing himself off the doorframe and taking slow steps into the room, keeping a distance from you still.

“No one deserves that…”

Terzo scoffed, looking off to gaze out of the window and shaking his head as if what you said offended him in some way.

“So now you know,” he shrugged, looking back towards you, his hands still shoved deep in his pockets. You kept an eye on them, mind racing with all kinds of possibilities – he could have a weapon of some sorts hidden from view. You needed to be on your guard. “I suppose you will report me now, sí?”

There was a playful glint in his eyes that you didn’t miss, like he was taunting you, waving a red flag to a bull. If you said you were, would he attack you too? But surely he couldn’t simply take your word for it if you said you wouldn’t either… Truthfully, you weren’t sure what you were going to do. Your only instinct was to run – fast.

You let his question linger in the air, far too much silence going by as he watched you, assuming you’d frozen in fear. He hadn’t expected you to dart towards the door, your only goal to get downstairs and out of the house as quickly as possible. So when you did exactly that, he watched for a split second, anger snapping inside him.

You barely made it out of the room before you felt a sudden force slam you forwards and into the wall of the corridor. A scream erupted from your chest, blood-curdling and gut-wrenching to anyone who would have heard it – but out here? No one would. How he’d moved so fast, you had no idea, but he had both of your wrists behind your back, and his whole body weight held you tightly against the wall.

“You are leaving so soon?” he asked, leaning in to speak directly in your ear as you writhed under him to try and escape, but his grip was too strong even without him putting seemingly any effort into it. “I was just getting used to you living in my house…”

“This is MY house,” you growled, gritting your teeth and avoiding his eyes.

“Then why should you want to leave? Are you scared I might hurt you, cara mio?”

Tears spilled from your waterline, giving away your fear and distress. Of course you were scared he was going to hurt you. He’d already hurt so many…

When he received no answer from you other than a sob in defeat and the stilling of your limbs as you gave up fighting his grip, he manhandled you until you span around, your back now against the wall just like it had been the other day.

“Th-this isn’t real… You’re not real…” you whispered to yourself, squeezing your eyes shut in the hopes you might wake up from your nightmare. You did not.

“I’m quite real, cara. We’ve been over this, no?” he lifted your wrist again like he had the other day, this time settling your hand delicately on his cheek and holding it there with his much bigger palm. “See?”

His gentility confused you, and when you opened your eyes, you saw a strange softness in his face. For a moment, you almost thought his expression was one of admiration. It didn’t matter what it was, but you couldn’t look away. This man – this serial killer – was being so gentle with you, his eyes cast over you like he was utterly obsessed with you.

“Why?” you whispered, more tears spilling over your cheeks. Still, you held his, despite his grip on your hand lessening ever so slightly. You wanted to understand, talk him down maybe just enough to let you go. You wanted to appeal to the softness you saw in him.

“I have no choice,” he said flatly, almost with a hint of shame. But that only crossed the wires in your mind more.

“I… I don’t understand.”

“I choose them carefully… They are not good people, cara. They have ruined others lives, even taken them and I-“ he stopped himself, looking down at the floor in shame. Your brows creased together, trying to piece your thoughts into coherency.

“It’s always a choice,” you started to argue back, softly so as not to raise any more rage within him in such a precarious position such as the one you found yourself in beneath him. But his head snapped back up nonetheless, his hand gripping onto yours and throwing it back down beside you. He kept you caged beneath him still, hands planted firmly on the wall.

“I assure you, bella ragazza (pretty girl), there is no choice. It is me or them.”

Slowly, he raised his head from where he’d stared at the floorboards between your feet. His eyes watched you closely as he tilted his head back a little, and his lips parted until you could clearly see two very white, very sharp fangs protruding from under his top lip.

For a moment you didn’t react at all, calculating what you were seeing. His hands hadn’t moved, so he hadn’t put them in himself. You’d seen him so many times, and up close too, and never saw them before… They had to be real. He had fangs.

“That’s impossible…” you whispered, “there’s no such thing as-“

“Vampires?” he finished your sentence for you, “I’m sorry to shatter your illusion of a perfect world, cara mio, but I can assure you, there certainly is.”

Finally, your survival instincts kicked in, adrenaline pumping through your veins almost in an instant. You shoved your hands against his chest and pushed with all the strength you had, trying to get him away from you, to preserve yourself. All this time you had felt like prey, and it had been instinct all along. You were prey.

Your shove did nothing. He remained unmoving, like stone encasing you against the wall. You thrashed your arms around, trying to escape him but it was completely useless. You were already trapped, and at the mercy of a real vampire.

“I’m sorry, cara mio, but you will not overcome my strength nor my speed. This is useless, I assure you.” His voice had no hint of patronising, instead of genuine sorrow. It felt as if he knew he had to kill you now, but he didn’t want to kill you. You gave up, your fists balling up against his chest as you lay your head back against the wall, out of breath and sobbing as you accepted your fate.

“Please… don’t kill me, Terzo…” you wept, head lolling forward to look into his eyes for what you thought might be the last time.

His brow was creased, his lips parted in horror as he looked back at you. He raised his gloved hand and wiped at the tracks on your cheek. “I don’t wish to kill you, cara mio… You understand, no? I must kill to stay alive, but not you – never you.”

You barely registered what he was saying before you were shooting questions at him again, needing to know more, to understand why he chose those people. Why he kept their trophies…

“Why them? Why did you choose them? They were innocent, just like me. Why did they deserve that?” you sobbed, your chest heaving as he held your cheek, still caging you against the wall.

“The girl they found? What the polizia (police) don’t know is she was behind the wheel of an intentional hit and run a few years ago. The store clerk a few weeks back? You do not want to see what was on his hard drive. All of them, vile humans. There is more evil in this world than you could possibly fathom, tesoro. They even tasted different…” he shrivelled his face in disgust, “but it keeps me alive, and my conscience semi-clear.”

The shock of his revelation did nothing to help your racing heart or foggy mind, processing everything far slower than you would like in this tumultuous situation.

“Suppose that was true, why do you keep their things?” you prodded further – there must be some part of him that enjoys it. Even if only the fact he were proud of removing scum from the earth, if that were true.

“Because I carry their souls with me… No matter how evil, they are people, and I take their life. Each one is a burden, and I must never forget that.”

There was genuine sorrow, genuine regret there. You could see it. But it changed nothing, he was still a murderer, a monster. And you were still trapped underneath him, literally backed up against a wall and inches away from deadly threat.

“But… it’s sick, Terzo! They’re kept like trophies, like you’re proud of what you do to them!” you protested. He hollowed his cheeks in annoyance, becoming more defensive as you accused him.

The hand that wiped your tears lowered to your neck, his fingertips tracing along the chain of the necklace you had yet to take off, until it reached the unusual pendant, where he played with it against your collarbone.

“And yet, you still wear it. You had time to take it off, if you were so disgusted by it. But here it is, looking so pretty around your… beautiful neck,” he sighed, his eyes roaming hungrily over the exposed skin he so clearly wanted to puncture and drink from. The fear in you started to rise again, your pulse that had just started to settle raising. More hot tears fell over your waterline as you took a deep, shaky breath.

“What… what do you want from me?” you pleaded, your voice trembling and squeaky. His eyes flickered up to yours, fingertips still playing with the pendant, grazing the skin so gently it left goosebumps. You would never admit to the thrill his touch seemed to be giving you, knowing what you know of him now.

But Terzo leaned in further, his hips meeting yours and pressing you further against the wall. The hand that had been keeping you caged against the wall all this time dropped to your waist, holding you just enough to send a wave of curious gratification through your abdomen. He was close enough that your noses would touch, should he tip his head down to you. You could feel his icy breath against your face again – a symptom of his state of undead, you now understood.

“I want you to love me, tesoro…” he confessed in a whisper, watching for your reaction.

“I only fear you,” you defied, unable to admit the curiosity his request sparked.

“Are they not the same?” His eyebrow arched up in question, waiting for your response. But honestly, you had none. You were dumbfounded, wondering what on earth he meant by that. Of course they weren’t the same, nothing about love and fear are the same. The attraction you had felt towards him in recent encounters was fleeting; a right place, right time kind of attraction. It had nothing to do with him, and now knowing what he was, it could never be him again.

Terzo understood your silence to be an internal monologue, a debate in your own mind. He pressed further, illustrating his point.

“Let me ask you, tesoro, does the thought of me make your hairs stand on end?” his fingertips grazed along the length of your collarbone, the grip on your waist squeezing slightly, “Does it make your stomach fill with the flutter of butterfly wings? Does it make your heart beat like the thrum of a hummingbird’s wings?”

You couldn’t deny it, but those were markers of fear as well as love. It didn’t mean they were synonymous. You refused to answer him.

“I can hear it, you know…” his hand flattened against your collarbone, “The pounding in your chest, the rushing of your blood through your veins. I hear them, working so hard when you are near me.”

Terzo leaned into your neck, his nose brushing against your jugular so tenderly as he breathed in deeply, enjoying your scent to the point of near intoxication. Little did you know, it was that scent that drew him out of hiding in the first place. He simply couldn’t stay away from you, and when he saw where the scent was coming from, saw your sheer beauty, he understood why you smelled as tempting as you did.

“Fear smells just like love to me, tesoro. It adds a sweetness to your already saccharine scent. Just like nectar appeals to a honey bee, you appeal to me much the same,” he continued to nuzzle his nose against your skin, his breath fanning over your collarbone. Every so often in his clumsy, inebriated state his lips would gently tickle the skin, sending a rush through you that now you were certain he could smell. “That nectar can be turned into honey, no? I wonder if I could do the same for you…”

You bit your lip, looking up towards the ceiling in an attempt to avoid his eyes that frankly were too hypnotic for their own good.

“They are all markers of fear, Terzo…” you whimpered. You felt his breath as he chuckled against your skin.

“Then tell me why I can smell the sweetest honey already pooling between your legs, cara mio…”

Your head snapped down to look at him, and you met his eyes already waiting for you, a smirk on his lips. You wanted to deny it, to slap him, to push him away from you but what was the point? He was right. There was no denying it. He could smell you.

The shame you felt, letting a monster like him have such an effect on you, was astronomical.

“Please…”  you pleaded; for what, you weren’t sure.

“What is it, cara mio? What can I give you?” he asked, straightening up and again cupping your cheek with his gloved hand, still holding your waist, still pressing his hips to yours. His lips were so close, all you could do was stare at them until you snapped yourself out of it, looking him directly in the eyes.

“Everything.”

It took no longer than a heartbeat for Terzo to process your answer, before his lips attached to yours so fast and hard you felt his fangs scrape against your bottom lip. A thrill zapped your core, and your balled up fists against his chest gripped the lapels of his coat to bring him impossibly close. You succumbed so quickly to him, desperate to feel his lips against yours.

While you were sure this feeling was not love, it was certainly not fear either. ‘Infatuation’ felt closer to the truth, borderline obsession just as Terzo had exhibited towards you. But denying it was futile now, and so instead, you leaned into it. The pair of you desperately held onto each other, kissing as if this was the only way you could get oxygen, and you’d been suffocating without each other.

Terzo started to move, trailing his passion down to your jawline, underneath your ear and down to your neck. Your heartrate quickened again, knowing that his mouth near your neck could go only one of two ways. Both options seemed to excite you in equal measures…

“W-will it hurt…?” you asked him, as you felt his fangs graze against your skin lightly, like he was holding himself back.

“Just for a second…” he panted like a dog laying out in the sun. And he wasn’t wrong, the pain would be momentary, his fangs emitting a small amount of venom that acts as an anaesthetic. That wasn’t the problem, and it wasn’t what stopped him in his tracks. “But I can’t…”

You cupped his cheeks, lifting his head to look him in the eye again. “What’s wrong?”

He looked as if he were in pain, his face screwed up in utter agony. He kept shaking his head, like he didn’t want to say it, like he was hiding a secret that would break him just to say aloud.

“If… If I do this, I might not be able to stop,” he whined, “and even if I do, how could I ever let you go after tasting you?”

You searched his eyes, saw the pain and the uncertainty in them. He truly didn’t want to hurt you, and right now he looked more vulnerable than you would think a creature of the night was capable of being.

“When you moved in I couldn’t leave you, I couldn’t stay away… And that was merely your smell, Tesoro. I’m afraid if I taste you, I could never leave you alone again.”

His admission floored you, and as much as the idea of giving yourself over to him willingly seemed to appeal to you, the rational part of your brain was still working enough to understand that that was a line that should not be crossed just yet.

“It’s okay… It’s okay,” you told him sincerely, comforting his distress before bringing his lips back to yours and resuming your heated exchange. Perhaps someday you would allow him that taste, a way of committing deeper than you could possibly comprehend at this stage. But there was a reason for the phrase “blood pact”, and it didn’t originate with the exchange of open wounds between two mortals.

As enthralled as he was in your lips, feeling your pulse beneath them tempting him, Terzo had to push the thought to the back of his mind. He couldn’t lose himself to the temptation so soon. He’d frighten you away if you saw him so feral, and he couldn’t let you disappear like everyone else in his life – not the only woman to ever have smelled so divine to him. Only he knew what that meant, that pull…  You were it for him. His obsession was unavoidable, you were his promised love.

It happened instantaneously for his kind, but for you? It would take time for you to see it, to feel what he felt. Human sense of smell was nowhere near as powerful, and so you could never know just by his scent that he was the one for you, the soul on the other end of the red string tied around your wrist.

To rid his mind of the temptation, he focussed on the moment at hand. His intense grip on your waste drifted over your hips and to the backs of your thighs until he was lifting them, using his hips to ground you against the wall so you wouldn’t fall. It was as if you were weightless to him, his inhuman strength making such light work of carrying you further down the hall and into your bedroom – his bedroom – until you both fell onto the bed.

No part of you thought for even a millisecond of stopping him, an intense need for him screaming from within you. You pushed his coat from his shoulders, diverting to his shirt buttons as soon as he began pulling at his sleeves to rid himself of the heavy wool. In no time at all, his chest was bare to you, peppered with dark hair that you’d expect from a man of Italian descent. You pulled him closer to you, reattaching your lips desperately.

His gloves disappeared as you kissed him, and you couldn’t help but flinch at the touch of his cold skin on yours, his hands sliding up under the hem of your shirt to hold you. He paused for a moment, searching your face for any sign his touch wasn’t welcome.

“Just cold…” you assured him, running your fingers through the dark locks of hair that had fallen over his face as he hovered above you.

“I, eh… sí, mi scusi, I am cold to the touch…” he apologised, a wave of insecurity flashing through his expression.

“I don’t mind,” you smiled sweetly, pulling him down with your hand woven into his hair and kissing his insecurity away. He regained his confidence, grip returning to your bare waist under your shirt and tightening with gratitude at your reassurance.

The way he kissed you was like worship, like he valued every second you allowed him to touch you, to be with you – and as he slowly began to undress you, his worship continued. He started with your shirt, pushing it up your abdomen and peppering the skin with more kisses as he exposed it. Over the curve of your breast peaking from above the cup of your bra, you felt the low rumble of a groan against your chest that was suppressed as he buried his face into your flesh. He was so gentle, so calculated in his motions and it was driving you crazy already.

Once your shirt was finally above your head and discarded somewhere to the side, he pulled the straps of your bra down, kissing along your shoulders and down your arms until he reached behind you to unclasp it. Your breasts bounced before him, and he immediately began to leave open mouthed kisses over them, laving his tongue over your nipples as they stood to attention under the chill of his lips. His free hand worked at your other breast, kneading like he was making the finest ricciarelli biscuit dough.

You couldn’t help the soft whines and hums that left your body as he worshipped you, hips rolling under him in a desperate attempt to feel something more. You wanted him so badly, already overcome with desire.

His hand came to rest on your hip, squeezing and he continued to suckle at your breast. His fingers dipped easily into the waistband of your paint-smeared sweats – one of several pairs you alternated when working on the house renovations. Before long, he was dragging them down your thighs, his cold knuckles grazing at the skin and sending a pleasurable shiver down your spine.

Terzo was taking his time without wasting any. He knew what he wanted, what you wanted, but he spent just enough time working your body, lavishing it to build anticipation. But before long, his kisses began to travel south, leaving a path of wet little marks down between the valley of your breasts and your navel until he was tracing the hem of your underwear, daring to run his finger along the sensitive skin.

It took a formidable amount of strength and restraint to keep your hips as still as you did, and even then, you were wriggling under his touch. But when he could tell you were growing restless, he wrapped his arm underneath your thigh and lifted it above his shoulder. Naturally, you spread wider for him, giving him complete access to your covered core where he could see so clearly the stain of arousal.

He was so close to you, the scent of your sweet honey so intoxicating. You could never understand how divine that scent was with your own human senses, but to him? It cemented itself in his memory. He knew that after today, he would never forget it. He didn’t want to rush, but frankly, it was getting impossible to resist a taste.

He lifted the hem of your panties and pierced the material beneath it with his fangs, easily tearing it away from your body before he pressed his nose to your mound, and took in a deep inhale. He growled between your legs, the vibration and exhale teasing your nerves until you were clenching around nothing.

He could wait no longer, his tongue reaching out to lap between your folds in one slow motion. He savoured the taste on his tongue, making sure to collect as much honey as he could for a truly overwhelming taste. You watched as his hips rocked into the bed below him, his hands tightening on your thighs. His tongue felt cold too, but the pressure was so welcome, a wave of euphoria passing through your core.

Expertly, Terzo used his whole mouth to bring you the pleasure he thought you deserved and yet, not once did you worry about the sharp fangs he’d used to strip you. He had the ability to retract them should he need to, and for this particularly delicate activity, he did just that. But his lips and tongue worked together to have you moaning at every lap, hips rolling underneath him.

Your hands found their way to his hair for purchase, tugging at the roots every time he sent a surge of pleasure through your clit. He loved it, moaning with you as if he too was close to an orgasm. Both of you had lost yourselves to the moment, completely enthralled in lust.

Terzo was becoming more and more desperate to have you finish on his tongue. Each pretty little sound he caused only made him want to hear more, and as you grew closer and closer to orgasm, you sweetened with added hormones that drove him wild. He unwrapped a hand from around your thigh and easily slid two fingers inside, not bothering nor needing to tease with how your body already gave itself over to him. He curled his fingers inside you, a shock of pleasure forcing your back to arch from the mattress as he found the perfect position.

His pace increased with every moan he elicited, the tension in your lower abdomen growing until you were on the verge of snapping.

“T-Terzo… Please,” you begged him. He chuckled darkly as he buried his face deeper within you, his nose adding to the equation and making your hips writhe until finally, that tension inside you snapped.

He didn’t stop, holding you down with inhuman strength as you erupted in cries of bliss. Your muscles contracted, thighs trapping his head in place and fingers pulling painfully at his hair.

Terzo slurped at your core, not letting a single drop of arousal go to waste. You tasted different as you came, the rush of hormones adding something so damn addictive that it wasn’t until you physically tried pushing his head away in oversensitivity that he snapped out of his trance, his head jolting up to look at you with his mouth and skin shimmering. He looked completely feral, his eyes wide, and you watched as his fangs returned with a snarl of a hungry animal locking onto its kill.

Your heart jumped in your chest; out of fear or lust you couldn’t be sure. But he heard it, the irregular thump as you lay vulnerable and weak beneath him. It only served to make his erection twitch in his slacks… Fear was a powerful feeling, and mixed with lust it was one of the most erotic combinations.

He crawled his way back up your body, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand before diving into a punishing kiss that knocked any remaining wind out of you. You could feel his length pressing into your hip, and while you were certainly already struggling with exertion you wanted nothing more than to know how he’d feel inside you.

So you reached between you both for his belt, fiddling with the buckle as you kissed him. Taking the hint, he kicked his shoes off over the edge of the bed, and when you’d managed to undo his belt and slacks, he helped to kick them with his underwear passed his knees to follow suit. With him bared to you and pressing into your hip once again, you could feel just how endowed he was, and just how ready for you he was.

“You are so beautiful, cara mio…” he mused between kisses, his cold fingertips trailing down your neck and arm, then back up. “And you can’t ever understand how exquisite you taste.”

“To an extent, I can…” you teased with a flirty smile, “I can taste myself on your tongue.”

He stared down at you for a moment, until realisation finally settled and his lips curled into a devilish grin.

“Tu sei una tentatrice, amore mio… (you are a temptress, my love…)” he whispered, lowering himself to your lips once again.

As you both lost yourself in another steamy kiss, you couldn’t help rolling your hips up to meet his. He hummed into your mouth, understanding that you wanted him completely, and reached between the two of you to grip himself. You spread your legs a little wider to make it easier for him, feeling how he prodded at your entrance once he’d lined himself up.

“Are you sure, amore?” he stopped to ask, and you nodded, biting your lip to contain the smile as you cupped his cheeks. With your permission, he slowly pushed forwards, filling you slowly as he glided through your slick. You fought to keep your eyes open, if only to watch the look of bliss that overcame his face – and boy was it worth it.

He looked so ethereal, like his pale skin had been carved by the finest of Greek sculptors in marble burdened with the curse of perfection. The chill of his skin did nothing to quell the burning heat of yours, finding the perfect balance.

“You’re so… warm,” he moaned, burying his face in the crook of your neck while he enjoyed the feeling for a moment. “Sembra fottutamente incredibile. (feels fucking incredible.)”

Given a moment to compose himself, he began to slowly rock his hips back and forth, gritting his teeth from the sensation alone. You would be the first to admit that he, too, felt incredible inside you, reaching places his fingers had only moments ago and sending waves of a dull pleasure through you once again at the embers of your last orgasm were being stoked.

His hand gripped your thigh and lifted it around his waist, obtaining a better angle and something for him to grip onto to stop his mind spiralling into sheer madness. Already, you were so difficult to resist; temptation was calling to him in the form of your steady, yet thundering pulse where his face lay against your neck. But if he lost himself, lost control like he was so terrified to, he was afraid resistance would fail him.

It was like torture. How could he feel so incredible pumping his length inside you while simultaneously experiencing the physical strain of holding his thirst back. You were his, he’d decided that long ago. But to truly make you his, all he would need to do was to give in, to sink his fangs into the skin he was peppering with kisses. He felt like a recovering addict desperately trying to resist as someone waved a hit under his nose. In some ways, that was exactly what he was.

But not yet. It was too soon. He had to resist for now, to let you make up your mind without ancient ritual influences before he allowed himself to truly make you his. He couldn’t bind himself to you, only for you to walk away when it all became too much, or hell forbid, you found someone more human to settle down with.

Instead, he focussed on the pleasure filling his cock as he pistoned in and out of you. He focussed on your pretty moans, and the way you clenched around him. He focussed on kisses to your neck instead of bites, groaning against your skin as he indulged in you. But too easily he lost himself, and soon he couldn’t help but drag his tongue from the bottom of your neck, to right underneath your ear.

You loved how it felt, completely oblivious to just how close you were to becoming a meal to him. To you it was simply another thing to drive you wild, and when you once again wrapped your fingers in his hair, your other arm pushing down on his back to pull him against you, you had no clue you were making it so much harder for him.

He kept suckling, licking, even nipping so gently at your neck – so fucking close to what he truly wanted as his instincts began to take over. He fought them as hard as he could snarling at himself in warning but still, you were oblivious to his internal fight and mistook his anguish for noises of pleasure.

Truly, he hadn’t meant to let it get this far; but when the sharp tip of his fang grazed just a little too close to where your pulse thundered against his tongue, and you writhed under him with a targeted hit to your g-spot, he nicked your skin just enough to draw the tiniest spec of blood… He hadn’t even noticed, your scent already filling his nose that he didn’t sense it intensify just a fraction until it was too late, and he’d laved his tongue over the graze.

It all happened too fast, then.

You were mid-moan when you felt an excruciating pain where his tongue had just been, the noise catching in your throat with a sudden choke. Your fingers naturally tightened in his hair, and your nails dug into the cold flesh of his back as a scream travelled its way through your ribcage and you couldn’t help but let it out. Your back arched and your muscles constricted, but Terzo’s hips never stopped and now that he’d got a taste of you – a real taste – he growled a visceral growl that you felt rumble in the pit of your stomach.

If he thought you’d tasted good between your legs, this was the most intensely delicious thing he’d ever had the pleasure of tasting. Such pure, untainted blood coated his tongue, dribbling down your neck as he ravished it. He’d known this was dangerous, that one bite would bind him to you for eternity after the first whiff of your scent when you moved in. But now that he’d tasted you, he couldn’t for the life of him remember why he’d fought so hard to stave off.

“T-Terzo, you-“ you tried to stop him, remembering how pained he’d looked when he explained why he really couldn’t do this, but it truly was too late. All it took was one drop. He cut you off with a hand clamping over your jaw, his other holding your hip in place with bruising force.

His hips never stopped, every sensation he felt only pushing him to fuck into you harder like a rabid monster. In that moment, that was exactly what he was. In that first split-second, he frightened you. You saw the side of him he’d tried so hard to hide, and coupled with the pain in your neck, your body flooded with adrenaline – which of course, only added to the sublime taste of your blood.

But like he had promised, the venom acted fast. The pain ebbed away into nothing but a sensation of being prodded and sucked at. Still you held onto him tightly, unable to deny that this was possible one of the most intimate feelings you’d ever felt, and the pleasure started to stack up.

Even to a point, where the rush of blood through the two puncture wounds in your neck became a pleasurable experience. You’d have trouble explaining just how, but it felt unbelievable, like a massage that tickled and sent endorphins flooding your mind. Little did you know, that was also the venom coursing through your body. But it didn’t matter, because coupled with Terzo’s cock thrusting against your g-spot it was the most glorious feeling in the entire world.

As you barrelled closer to a second orgasm, Terzo ripped his fangs from your neck and looked down at you beneath him. He had a look in his eye that was so predatory that you knew immediately you belonged to him now, whether you liked it or not. As luck would have it, you did like it; very much. That obsessive look, that ownership turned you on to a point that had you squealing for him beneath his hand.

Quickly, you reached your peak for a second time, holding him so tightly you thought that maybe even you would draw blood with your nails in his back. Just as that second burst of pleasure coursed through you, Terzo reattached himself to your neck, drinking in the newly sweetened blood that a rush of hormones created for him. If you could imagine the most expensive, and decadent wine you had ever tasted, it wouldn’t hold a candle to the taste of your blood to him right now.

Suddenly he lurched back again, this time removing his hands from your body and holding himself up, only to dive in and sink his fangs into the swell of your breast as it bounced with the force of each of his trusts. Again, you were met with pain the flooded your body but mixed with the high of your orgasm, you could only scream in pleasure. He drank from you again, kneading at your other breast as he too hurtled towards an orgasm.

The pain subsided quickly thanks to another dose of his venom, but he continued to drink from you, prolonging your euphoria just long enough for him to finally and violently reach his own high.

He erupted inside you, his head throwing back as he growled and lost his rhythm, pounding sloppily into you with each twitch of his cock. In your post-orgasm haze, you witnessed the look of bliss on his face, seeing for the first time the distinct red that coated his lips and dripped from his fangs down to his chin. He looked manic, but holy shit it was intensely erotic.

With the small amount of strength left in you, you sat up just enough to push your lips to his. You don’t know why you did it, or even that you had until you could taste the metallic twang of iron on your tongue. Terzo collapsed into you, wrapping his arms around you as he rolled to the side, taking you along with him. With the mess he created of your core, he slipped from inside you, now simply intent on holding you close while he processed that you were kissing him, despite being tainted with your blood. But it grounded him, and slowly, his orgasm subsided and his mind cleared of its fog.

Your kiss came to a natural end, the pair of you exhausted, and without a word you lay yourself on his chest, not bothering to wipe away the smears of blood around your own mouth as you caught your breath.

“I’m so sorry…” he whimpered, pulling you tighter against him and obscuring your view of his face so you wouldn’t have to witness the shame that settled there. You didn’t have the energy to speak, instead hoping that the circling of your thumb over the cool skin of his chest was enough comfort for now to show him you didn’t mind, that you’d wanted that as much as he had.

You let some time pass, calming yourselves down in each other’s arms. His grip on you lessened as the minutes passed, and eventually, you were able to look up at his face. To your shock and heartbreak, you noticed his cheeks were wet with something other than blood – Terzo was crying.

“Hey…” you soothed, shuffling further up the bed to hover above him. He covered his face with his hand, hiding himself but you pulled it away, cupping his cheek and swiping at the tear tracks. “No, no no… Stop this, it’s okay.”

“Mi dispiace tantissimo, (I’m so sorry,)” he cried, “I hurt you. I did the one thing I should never have done…”

“Shhh,” you hushed him like a newborn who couldn’t sleep, “I wanted that, remember? I told you you could.”

“You don’t understand, I… I have bound myself to you, and now, when you leave… it will devastate me,” he sobbed, staring straight up at the canopy of the large bed, unable to look you in the eye.

“What makes you think I will leave?” you asked him gently, still gently swiping his fresh tears away whilst fighting your own.

“Amore mio, I have lost everybody I have ever cared about,” he told you, finally looking you in the eye. “I have either outlived them, or watched as they turned their back on me. And now I have selfishly bound myself to you, knowing that I cannot ever let you go.”

His admission broke your heart. You certainly had no intention of going anywhere, the bond you now shared with him feeling strangely cemented and more intimate than any you’d had with another. But in the end, time would come for you just as it had the rest of his family, lying under the earth of your own back garden.

“How does someone… become like you?” you asked tentatively, absentmindedly, playing with the chest hair the covered his pecks.

Terzo’s brow creased in confusion. “Why would you ask such a thing? I couldn’t condemn you to a life like this…” After all he’d been through; the killings, loss, isolation, and even the exile he’d faced decades ago when the townspeople discovered what he was… He couldn’t put you in a position like that. He didn’t want you to become part of the dark legend of the Emeritus house, another spooky story passed from generation to generation to tell around campfires for years to come.

“Just tell me, how?” you pressed. He sighed, laying his head back on the pillow and staring back up at the canopy.

“You would need to drink the blood of my kind,” he stated simply, his nose wrinkling in disgust. “I could not ask that of you. The process is not an easy one, and to become like me is to be condemned to a life of heartache.”

You thought for a moment, acknowledging his concerns but deciding that whilst that had been his experience, it didn’t need to be yours. Not with him beside you – neither of you would need to be lonely ever again.

“I’m so sorry you’ve felt that heartache, but I believe that the two of us together could avoid that.”

He raised his head to look at you again, examining your face for a moment while he contemplated what some kind of future might look like with you.

“Perhaps not yet, I understand. But Terzo, I will prove that I intend on going nowhere. And when you feel like you might be ready to trust that, I’ll be waiting,” you promised him, cupping his jaw and stroking your thumb gently over his cheek. “Until then, I can be your very own personal supply, hm?” you smiled, “You won’t need to take a life, so long as you have me little and often, right?”

“You… would do that? For me?” his eyebrows creased together in question, truly in disbelief you would offer him such a thing.

“Mhm,” you nodded, “I mean as long as every time feels as incredible as that,” you giggled. “And besides, you’ll get a decent meal at least once a month,” you joked, lightening the mood a little with a cheeky smirk.

Terzo rolled his eyes with a laugh that vibrated his chest beneath you. He shook his head at the absurdity of your offer, no matter how technically practical that sort of arrangement would actually be to a man of his kind.

“Oh, amore… sei davvero una tentatrice (you really are a temptress)…” he grinned, leaning up to capture your lips in a sweet, blood-stained kiss.

A/N: Huge thank you to @her-satanic-wiles for beta reading! If you'd like to leave me a tip, you can do so here.

If you'd like to read any of my other works, you can find them here.

[tasty-ribz]

Peanuts and Cracker Jacks

Secondo x Female Reader

Still lusting over Secondo in the ghaseball uniform so here's a sort of sequel to Sliding Home (which you don't have to read first) and some amazing art by @tasty-ribz. Happy late birthday Ribz! Love you bby 💙

Warnings: baseball talk, smutty fun in a locker room, nsfw 18+ only, mdni, 1600k words, not really beta read forgive me

“Why am I doing this again?”

“I told you,”  You slapped his hands away when he reached up to adjust his ball cap.  “It’s good pr, gets people curious about the chur–”

“You misunderstand.  Why am I doing this again?”  Secondo stood up and turned to look himself over in the mirror.  “Couldn’t Terzo have taken a turn?”

“Well, I tried Terzo.  Had Copia take him out onto the abbey grounds for a game of catch and everything.”  When you were silent for a few moments Secondo turned your way with a raised eyebrow.  “He, uh, broke one of the windows of Primo’s main greenhouse.”

“Ah.  That’s why the old man was screaming the other day.”

“Yes.  So that was a whole…thing.  Imperator told me to send you again and well, here we are.”

You stood up with a flourish, your arms wide and a big smile on your face.  It was clear Secondo wasn’t buying it.  He clicked his tongue at you as he took a few steps closer.

“Imperator chose me, eh?  Not her golden boy?”

“Copia was uh, busy.  You know,”  When Secondo closed the distance between you even further you gulped and started backing up.  “Papa stuff.”

“Si, I do know of this ‘Papa stuff’.”  He grinned when your back hit the wall and you let out a little yelp.  “I think I know why I’m here and mio fratellino isn’t.”

“Terzo would’ve nailed someone in the head with a ball.”

“No, not him.  Copia.”

“Copia was busy, as I said.”

“Wrong.  Copia has been posting pictures of his rats on his private Instagram all morning.”

“Wait, he has a private Instagram?  No one told me thi–”  

Secondo’s finger on your lips shut you up.  You couldn’t help but hold your breath as the man shifted even closer, one arm bracketing you.  Like usual, having him so close overwhelmed your senses.  His demeanor, his words, even his smell was pulling you in like always.  You were absolutely enamored by him.

Especially with him in that uniform.

“I think, cara mia, that you asked Imperator to send me.  Specifically.”

“That doesn’t seem like something I would do.”

Secondo flashed you a grin that had your stomach doing a little somersault.  He leaned in close, his lips just barely flitting across your own before he moved them close to your ear,  “You wanted to see me in this costume again.”

“It’s not a costume, it’s a uniform.”  He snorted, the quick exhalation of breath on your ear making you jump.  “And so what if I did,”  Secondo pulled back far enough for you to see his face, an eyebrow once again raised as he regarded you.  “Want to see you in this again?  Is that so bad?”

“Non c’è male affatto.  It’s bene.  Good.  But,”  His lips were back on your ear, his body now pressing up against you.  Your hands moved to grasp at the uniform top, your grip tightening when his tongue ran along the shell of your ear.  “Next time just ask me, eh?”  

You stumbled a bit when he abruptly backed away, your grip on his top the only thing keeping your wobbly legs from collapsing under you.  There was a brisk knock at the door to the room and a voice called out that Secondo had ten minutes.  He covered your hands with his, the black leather warm and soft like it always was.  You suddenly felt like apologizing and opened your mouth to do so but he seemed to sense it.  He shushed you while bringing your hands to his mouth and pressing kisses to each of your palms before letting them go and walking towards the door.

“Papa, wait!”  He stopped and turned back towards you, his eyes darkening a bit when you began to slink his way.  You reached towards him and straightened his sleeves, smoothing your hands down his chest next until your fingers rested on the buckle of his belt.  “Mi dispiace, Papa.  Shall I make it up to you?”

“If it pleases you.”  His eyes focused on your mouth when you bit your bottom lip, your tongue immediately peeking out to soothe the sting.  “It would certainly please me.”

“Let’s make it interesting.  How about I reward you based on how you do out there?”

“How I do?”

“Yes,”  You ran your hands back up his chest to rest on his broad shoulders.  “Let’s say if you go out there and completely screw up you’ll only get a kiss.”

To demonstrate, and because you really wanted to kiss him, you pressed your lips to his, quickly pulling away when he tried to deepen it.

“Or?”

“Or, you could get the ball close to home plate and earn some kisses down here.”  Secondo groaned when your hand massaged his cock through his pants.  You were quick, not wanting to get him too riled up so he couldn’t even walk out there.  His growl when you let go of him had you smiling and reaching up to kiss the tip of his nose.  “Does that sound fair so far?”

“I suppose.”  When another brisk knock and shout for Papa came at the door again you winked and pulled away.  “What do I get if I throw it across the plate?  A strike, yes?”

“If you manage a strike, Papa, I’ll let you do whatever the fuck you want to me.”

You stared at each other for a handful of seconds, both of you breathing a little heavier.  Secondo was the first to break eye contact, swiftly turning and striding towards the door.  When he yanked it open he looked back your way, a small smirk playing at his lips.  The stadium assistant trying to usher him onto the field was making worried noises but Secondo ignored him.

“Be ready.”

With that he turned and left, the door clicking shut behind him.  You let out the breath you hadn’t realized you’d been holding and sank down to sit on a bench.  The distant roar of the crowd had you smiling and you began to pick some lint off your top.

“Play ball.”

“I don’t fucking believe it.  Oh, oh right there.”

His thumb circled your clit again while two of his fingers curled inside of you, dragging along the spot that had you grinding down into them.  Your clothes were already soaked from the warm water of the shower, sticking to both of you.  Secondo’s cap was on the floor somewhere, along with his belt and your shoes.  You couldn’t bring yourself to care that you didn’t have a change of clothes to leave the stadium in.  All you cared about was that he kept doing that.

“What’s not to believe?”  He pulled back far enough so he could take one of your breasts in hand, thumbing at your nipple through your top.  “Didn’t think I could throw a strike?”

“No, no I did—oh, yes.  Yes, please.”

“Which is it, dolcezza?  No?”  He smiled, tilting his head as he watched you lose your mind.  “Or yes?”

“Yes, you bast–ah!”

Two fingers inside of you became three and he started to pump them in and out of you faster.  Even over the falling water you swore you could hear them move through your wetness.  In truth you had been wet all damn morning, the anticipation of seeing him in the baseball uniform again was too much.  Your head fell back against the wall with a thunk and you watched him through half-lidded eyes.  He looked equally a mess as you, the paint running down his face and disappearing down his neck.  When he caught you looking he grinned and you were glad the wall was there to help hold you up.

“I’ve been practicing.  Knowing you as I do I figured it was only a matter of time before you’d drag me to one of these stupid games again.”

“Baseball isn’t, ah fuck, stupid.”

“Demanding souvenirs and singing that stupid song about pretzels and Cracker Jacks.”

“It’s peanuts and Cracker Jacks you absolute snob–fuck, Papa please.  I can’t—”

“You can.  You can take this, my fingers fucking you.”  He moved in close, the water dripping off his head onto yours, streaking your hair and face in black and white.  “You’ll come on my fingers and then you’ll get on your knees and suck my cock.”  He was grinning when you looked up at him sharply.  “Whatever I wanted, remember?”

“Y-yes.”  

“Bene.  Molto bene.”  He gripped your chin and dragged a thumb across your lips.  “I want to come inside your pretty mouth before I come inside your cunt.”

His words coupled with his fingers knowing exactly what you needed had you coming almost immediately.  The orgasm rippled through your body and you clung to him as his fingers continued to move inside of you, slower and slower.  The water continued to beat down on you both as you took a few moments to collect yourself, eventually looking up to meet his eyes and to see him grinning once more.

“What is it?”

“On your knees, dolcezza.”  

You took a quick breath and then obediently dropped, wincing when your knees touched the tile.  When you glanced down to his belt quickly Secondo nodded and you went to work undoing it and opening his pants.  His thick cock sprang forward, eager for your mouth.  As your lips began to close around him he rested his hands on your head, stopping you from going any further.  Confused, you pulled away, looking back up at him.

“Papa?”

“Just trying to think of the phrase.  Ah,”  He bit at his bottom lip like he was trying to hold in a laugh.  You huffed, narrowing your eyes because you knew what he was going to say and you both loved and hated him for it.  “Play ball.”

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[tasty-ribz]

Peppermint Oil & Kisses

You only have to take one closer look to see exactly what the reason for his foul mood is. The makeup around his temples is smudged, as is the paint around the bridge of his nose when he regards you under droopy eyelids. “Headache again?” Or: Secondo had a long day– you're ready to take care of your Papa.

content: 1.6k words, gn!reader, hurt/comfort, non-sexual intimacy, showering together, established relationship, domestic fluff, lots of pampering for your papa ♡

Masterlist – Ao3 link

A swell of Italian curses, muffled by the heavy oak door. The keys jangle as he misses his target multiple times, the wood groaning painfully as he leans against it before trying again. When the lock finally springs open, Secondo enters your shared quarts with a sigh that seems to carry the combined weight of every burden in the world.

“Hello, my love,” you greet him from the couch, pulling your legs up to make room for him.

He grumbles what seems to be a greeting as he pulls at his robes with impatient, unusually clumsy fingers. When he misses the hook on the coat rack the fabric falls to the floor, emerald green and black pooling at his feet. He heaves another sigh.

“Oh, you’re especially grumpy today, hm?” You only have to take one closer look to see exactly what the reason for his foul mood is. The makeup around his temples is smudged, as is the paint around the bridge of his nose when he regards you under droopy eyelids. “Headache again?”

“Hmph.”

“Oh, heavy is the head that wears the mitre,” you mumble when he sinks down on the sofa beside you, weighty like a rock sinking into the ocean. “Is it very bad?”

“Hmph.”

“That’s because you’re too stubborn to take your meds in time before it gets like this,” you chide, even though your voice is still gentle, wrapping a supportive arm around his shoulders. “You always think you can push through by sheer force of will.”

“Hmph.”

You press a soft kiss to his temple and he leans against you, resting his weary head against your lips. “It’s okay to need a little help, my love.”

“I have you for that, no? You always take such good care of your Papa.”

“Well, not even I can just magically rub away your headache.”

He tuts, squeezing your thigh with his gloved fingers. “That depends on where you’re rubbing, hm?”

You chuckle, cradling his head against you and peppering his skin with more kisses. “I don’t think you’re up for that tonight, darling. But I can rub some of Primo’s peppermint oil on your temples if you would like?”

“Per favore.”

More kisses and he grows heavier by the second. His black eyelids are closed now, long lashes tickling the skin just below as they flutter with every gentle touch. “Let’s get you cleaned up before you fall asleep. I will take care of dinner today and you can take a little nap.”

He gives a dissatisfied hum. “Amore, we are making Cacio e Pepe tonight.”

“So? I helped you prepare it many times and it’s not that difficult.”

You can immediately tell that the idea displeases him. His brows pull together even more than in their relaxed state and his lips curl ever so slightly at the edges. This is the closest you will ever get to an actual pout from him and you have to fight off an amused smile.

“You don’t have to worry that I won’t need you anymore,” you whisper. “I will always prefer being your kitchen helper, my love.”

“I’m not wo–” You shut him up with a proper kiss and he practically melts into it. The smudged make up tastes bitter when you lick along his full lips. Secondo sighs, teasing your tongue with his for a moment before he pulls away. “Va bene. But you will join your Papa for his nap.”

“I will join you until you fall asleep.”

He frowns again but you don’t allow him to complain. Instead you stand and pull him up with you towards the bedroom. Darkness wraps around you, blinding you until you turn on the lamp on his bedside table that he uses for his late night reading. Two hefty tomes reside there with his reading glasses folded neatly on top, though you assume he won’t have any need for those tonight.

“Let’s get you showered,” you say instead, noting that he’s already removing his clothes.

You help him with the buttons on his black dress shirt when his fingers, usually so dextrous, start to fumble unsuccessfully. It feels intimate every time, to help him when he is truly in need of you, a man so proud of his independence and autonomy allowing you to see his vulnerable moments. 

Once you reveal his chest, you permit your fingers to feel him. Combing through the dense hair,  you lightly scratch his skin in the way you know he enjoys before you you push the fabric from his shoulders. Placing your lips over his clavicle, you leave a trail of featherlight kisses along the sensitive skin that stretches over the bone.

“Amore,” Secondo whispers. 

“I love you.”

He smiles, tilting your chin up so you can see the softness in his eyes. “As I love you, my dove.”

You steal a tender kiss and finally lead him to the bathroom. Before you send him into the shower you remove the bulk of his face paints with make up wipes, then rub some of the cleansing oil into his skin to loosen the rest from his pores. For once he allows you to pamper him without much fuss, without insisting on giving back or complaining that he can do it himself.

“Join me, amore,” he says when you turn on the water, setting it to a medium temperature. 

You don’t question him, instead your heart swells with love. You’re willing to do whatever he asks of you when he is like this, when you feel so needed and loved. 

While he rinses off the rest of his paints you undress and then join him, the water immediately relieving all of the tension in your body. You begin to lather each other gently, washing off the remnants of your respective days. When you reach his shoulders you begin to massage him with gentle hands, making sure to adjust the pressure to his liking. His body feels stiffer than usual, the tension of a day spent working through his pain only slowly kneaded from his weary muscles. Every so often he moans in relief, closing his eyes when you reach a particularly cramped spot and you make sure to press a kiss to every single one of them.

Back in the bedroom, you put on some comfortable clothes and drag Secondo’s old Iron Maiden shirt over his head that is littered with more holes than you can count. He refuses to get rid of the old piece out of sentimentality as Primo got it for his thirtieth birthday decades ago. Secondo snakes his arms through the designated holes before they wrap around you, pulling you in for a deep kiss that he sinks into with a sigh. His body weighs heavy against yours. You have to use all your strength to stay upright but do your best to provide him with all the comfort he needs. It is rare that he so openly seeks it, that his guard is let down all the way.

You’re grateful that he lets you see it all now – how he can’t sleep through the nights anymore, how he winces and holds his lower back after getting up in the morning, the way he squints without his reading glasses and the frequent headaches after hours of paperwork. It doesn’t come easy to him. He used to try and hide it until you slowly wormed your way beyond his walls with a heating pad and ibuprofen at hand. He is not even close to accepting that he can’t stay young forever but at least he allows himself a few simple comforts by now. The rest will come in time.

“Now sit. I’ll fetch the peppermint oil.”

He squeezes your hip, raising a brow at your commanding tone. You smile cheekily and press a kiss to his jaw, noting that the corners of his mouth have lifted as well. While he sits down on the bed you retrieve the vial of oil from your bedside table. Dabbing some of it onto your fingers you begin to rub it into the skin of his temples, then his forehead. Secondo’s eyes close and he hums with relief at the gentle massage. You continue even after the oil has fully sunk in, revelling in the way his features relax as the pain recedes. He looks better now, but still incredibly tired.

After you thoroughly wash your hands, you join Secondo in bed, finding that he’s already half-asleep. He rouses enough to notice you and reflexively pulls you close, dragging you halfway across the mattress. You shift onto your back with him in your arms, allowing him to rest his head on your chest. As you gently run your fingers over his scalp, he releases a heavy but content sigh that tickles your skin. Quiet settles in the room and you can feel your own tiredness overwhelming you with every calm breath you take.

“We could always eat the Cacio e Pepe tomorrow,” you suggest. “I know you’re not a fan of take out but–”

“A splendid idea, amore,” Secondo grumbles. “We will order the take out.”

You smile as you close your eyes, continuing to stroke his head to help him fall asleep a little faster. In return, his fingers draw a circular pattern over your hip, never straying from your body for more than a second. Soon he starts to snore, his soft and steady exhales lulling you to sleep as well.

Thank you for reading! Hope you enjoyed – kudos, comments, rbs etc are as always much appreciated ♡

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[tasty-ribz]

Can I also ask for Primo and „whispering in-between kisses“? You know what types of kisses 👀

I know the exact kind of kisses you want. It's time to worship that old man.

What You See I Primo x gn!reader

~ Primo needs you to tell him what you see when you look at him ~

(1800 words, fluff, angst, body worship, some spice, nsfw, 18+ only, not beta read)

~~~ ~~~ ~~~ ~~~ ~~~ ~~~

“Amore, what do you see when you look at me?”

You set your brush down onto your vanity and turned sideways in the chair to look at Primo.

“I see someone that was supposed to be dressed ten minutes ago.”

Usually Primo enjoyed your teasing and he often teased you back.  It was an easy banter between two people that had known each other for many years.  Looking at Primo right now though it was clear he was not in a teasing mood.  He sat down heavily on the side of your bed, a long sigh exhaling out of him.

“That is not what I mean.”  There was a tone to his voice you didn’t normally hear and it made you get up to head his way.  You held your bathrobe together and quietly padded over to stand before him.  Primo was staring down at his hands in his lap, wringing them together nervously, so you dropped to your knees and slipped your hands into his to stop the movement.  “Tell me the truth.”

You pulled his hands towards you and placed kisses into each of his palms before looking up at him.  He met your gaze now, his eyes searching yours for an answer.  

“I see the man I’ve admired for many years and loved for many more.”  Primo snorted and pulled his hands away with enough force you fell back on your butt.  “Hey, what’s going on with you?”

“That is not what I asked.”  He stood up and then reached down to you, gently grasping your elbows and pulling you to your feet.  You let out another ‘hey’ when he tugged you over to the windows that overlooked his garden.  Primo squeezed your hands and then let go of one to grasp your chin.  “Now, look at me and tell me what you see.”

You pulled away from his hands and then placed yours on his shoulders.  With a firm shove you got him to fall into the chair behind him and climbed after him.  You straddled him, your knees on either side of his legs.  He wouldn’t meet your eyes so you used his own move on him and took a hold of his chin.

“I see someone that is tired from all of his years of working hard for this church.”  His mismatched gaze met yours then and your heart clenched at the look in his eyes.  You leaned forward, placing a soft kiss on his forehead before moving down to kiss the soft, puffy skin under each eye.  “You never get enough sleep because you’re up too late worrying about your brothers.”

The only answer you got was a soft nod and you smiled at him before kissing the tip of his nose.  Your lips trailed from there to where the skin next to his mouth where he had wrinkles from smiling and then further down to where it had begun to sag.

“My Papa is getting older and his face shows it.  His body shows it.”  You kissed along his chin and then made your way down his neck, whispering into the wrinkled skin there when you stopped again.  “Can I keep going, Papa?  Can I show you what else I see?”

You felt him nod above you so you slipped your hands into his robe and pushed it off his shoulders.  He was bare underneath and you took a moment to admire the body you had been intimately familiar with for many years now.  When you started kissing him again you made your way from his neck across to his shoulder.

“Your skin has seen too much sun, Papa.  Look at all these freckles.”  To illustrate the amount he had you made sure to kiss each one you saw.  You made a mental note to be more forceful with sunscreen next time he went out in his garden.  Down his arm you went, finally holding his hand up between you so you could both look at the rough skin on the back.  A few of his knuckles were misshapen, arthritis having begun to set into his joints many years ago.  “I can tell that these hands have done so much.”

“Like what?”

Primo’s voice was quiet and shaking slightly.  You were afraid to look into his eyes because if you saw tears there you would end up crying too.  He needed you to be strong right now and you refused to let him down.

“Your hands have held onto so many others here, guiding them onto their path within the church…leading them in prayer…pulling them from the lake during their unholy baptism.”  A thought crossed your mind and you couldn’t help but laugh a little.  “I’ve seen this hand slap Secondo on the back of the head when he misbehaved as a child.”

“Or as a grown man.”

It was good to hear Primo laugh and you chanced a look at his face.  His eyes shone with unshed tears and he sniffed when he saw the same in your eyes.  He brought his free hand over and caught one when it started to trail down your cheek.  

“I remember you holding Terzo’s hand when his mother passed away, how you carried him around the garden so he could pick flowers to take to her grave each week.”  You grabbed his other hand when he tried to wipe your tears away again.  “And I remember when you stormed up to Nihil and took Copia from his arms.”

“That old fool wasn’t cut out to be a father.”

“No he wasn’t, but you were.”  You placed his hands on the arms of his chair and leaned forward to place a kiss on his chest over his heart.  His chest hair was more white than blonde now, much like the hair on his head before he had begun to shave it, but it was still soft to the touch.  For a moment you rested your ear against him, listening to his strong heartbeat.  “You’ve been there for all of your brothers and helped them to become the men they are today.”  

He took a deep breath under your ear and you could tell he was trying very hard to control his emotions.  You weren’t done though, because deep down you knew what his biggest worry was when he started this conversation.  Very slowly you turned your head so that your lips were against his skin and you kissed a trail to his nipple.  You flicked your tongue against it before pulling it between your lips and nipping at it softly with your teeth.

“Amore…”

“Hush Papa, I’m not done.”  You moved to his other nipple and gave it the same amount of attention before going lower to where his skin had started to pull down with age.  The wrinkles here were larger, the skin soft and warm against your lips.  Primo jumped when your tongue left a wet trail across his chest.  “When I look at you Primo, when I touch you, I see a man that has aged beautifully.”

Your mouth moved to the center of his chest and you slid off his lap to rest on your knees before him.  The robe was easy to pull off his lap and now he was completely bare before you.  His cock was still soft, but that didn’t surprise you.  It didn’t bother you either.  You placed your hands on his knees and then slid them up his thighs, resting where they met his waist.  Primo abruptly dropped his hands to cover yours and gave them a squeeze.

“Not tonight, I don’t think, amore.  Too much going on in this old head.”

You smiled and moved closer to him, shouldering his legs further apart.  

“It doesn’t make a difference to me either way.  Do you know why?”  Primo shook his head, his mouth falling open in a silent gasp as you leaned forward and started to mouth along his soft cock.  “Because I still see the man I love no matter what is happening here.”

Even soft his cock was long and you took it as deep as you could, the tip reaching well into your mouth.  You tongued the underside, pulling back so you could press it against his slit.  His thighs had begun to shake under your hands and you heard him groan above you.  As you bobbed up and down a few times you let out a little moan when you felt him finally twitch in your mouth.  With a smile you pulled off, a string of saliva lingering from your lips to the tip as you moved away.  Primo pulled a hand out from under yours and rubbed his thumb against your bottom lip, smearing your saliva around.

“Shall I keep going Papa?”  He gave you a quick nod, taking a deep breath as you mouthed along the side of his cock.  It twitched again, slowly filling out as you gave it attention.  You licked the drop of precum that started to leak at the tip and then looked up to see him watching you.  “Will you tell me now?  Will you tell me what you see when you look at me?”

He brought his hands up to cup your face, smiling softly as he pulled you close enough to slip his cock into your mouth once more.

“I see someone that is more beautiful than any flower in my garden.”  Primo grunted as he began to thrust in and out of your mouth, his cock nearly fully hard.  “Someone that has never left my side, that ah!  Cazzo.  Someone that…someone that I love more than anything.”

His moans started to mix with your whimpers as he moved faster, the tip of his cock hitting the back of your throat with every thrust now.  There was so much more you wanted to say.  So much more that he needed to hear but you didn’t want to stop him.  You wanted him to fill your mouth with his cum, you wanted to swallow everything he gave you.  

Primo’s fingers began to dig harder in your hair as his cock started to kick in your mouth.  It wasn’t long before he nearly doubled-over as he came.  Your mouth filled with his release and you did your best to swallow it all, lapping at his cock to clean off what you could.  When he pulled out you kept your lips wrapped around him until you pulled off with a soft pop.  He was looking at you like you were the only other person in his world and you found your eyes filling with tears again when he spoke softly to you.

“In you, amore, I see someone that I will worship until my final days.  If you’ll let me.”

“Forever, Papa.”

He chuckled, wiping the mixture of saliva and his release off your chin before leaning in to press his forehead against yours.

“Forever.” 

~~~ ~~~ ~~~ ~~~ ~~~ ~~~

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[tasty-ribz]

cemetery stroll - werewolf!secondo x reader - part 3

a/n: belated birthday gift for @tasty-ribz!! werewolf secondo is back baby and he is HUNGRY.

about 2.5k words. sexy smut. mdni. 18+! part one / part two. ao3 link.

“Jeff! Shut the fuck up!” Shauna elbows him in the ribs. He laughs and shrugs her off, placing one hand on her shoulder and giving her a strong push. She falls off the tree stump where they were sitting on onto the wet leaves. “Dickhead!”

“Can you guys relax?” Colin huffs from the other side of the fire. They do not relax, instead Shauna launches herself into Jeff’s lap and starts to tickle his sides. “I’m trying to tell a spooky story!!” Colin whines in protest then angrily throws his marshmallow on a stick into the flames. Jeff forcefully removes Shauna from his lap and sits her down beside him.

“Fine, man. Relax” He shrugs and shoves his hands into his sweatshirt pocket. “Tell your story and quick so we can get back to having fun.” Shauna giggles behind him while Colin gives an exasperated sigh.

“There’s supposedly creatures that roam these woods. People go missing all the time. They tried to build houses just outside the woods but the structures would end up rotted out as soon as they were put up.” Colin sounds almost uninterested, his gaze drifting to look at the darkness behind them. “Legend says that witches inhabit these woods… the creatures are their pets and they abduct people and use their bones for the brews.”

“Psh. Boring.” Jeff throws a stick into the fire.

“It’s not witches, though. You know that old building right at the edge of the woods?”

“The Satanic Church?” Shauna asks.

“The… I mean yes, but it’s not… it’s not actually a satanic church is it?” Colin is thrown off.

“No, that’s true.”

“What? No way.

“Yeah. It is a Satanic Church or something but they’re nice, ya know. They, like, donate food to the homeless and stuff. They’re good people.” Shauna kicks a few leaves at her feet.

“Oh.” Colin sinks into his folding chair. “Well never mind then.” He crosses his arms and sits in silence.

This is a bummer of a camping trip for all of them it seems. They don’t last much longer, with Shauna and Jeff retiring early to the tent while Colin stays in his chair to watch the fire go out and having to listen to the two of them screw around. He’s not particularly happy with being the third wheel but this time alone makes it all the worth it. He starts to doze off as the night drags on, the fire taking its time… or is something keeping it alight? No, no… that’s Colin’s creeped out brain talking. It’s definitely because they put an ungodly amount of lighter fluid onto the firewood.

A twig snaps in the distance that makes Colin’s hair stand on end. His surroundings are pitch black except for the fire. Wide awake now but he’s sure it’s nothing. That is… until he hears more rustling that only grows closer and closer with each passing second.

“Hello?”

Dead silence.

Colin sinks further into his camping chair and returns his gaze to the fire. A few peaceful moments pass.

And then he sees it. A pair of glowing eyes from the darkness right by the tent. He blinks and they’re gone, only for his attention to be diverted to the tent rustling with the wind. Or so he thinks. Colin watches as the tent is ripped open in front of him, blood spattering onto his glasses. His chair tips over as he screams, the sounds of flesh tearing and his friends’ gurgles filling the night air around them. He scrambles to his feet and makes the mistake of looking behind him.

He’s never seen anything like this. True terror.

The creature roars, its claws and snout bloodied from eating poor Shauna and Jeff. Their bones crunch beneath the beast’s feet, fur blowing in the gentle wind of the night. Its eyes are fixated on Colin, stalking closer to him. It’s on hind legs Colin chokes on his own breath, his chest tight and he turns on heel to run. Despite having a head start, he can hear the monster’s thundering paws against the ground growing closer and closer. Tears run down his face, taking frantic breaths and babbling prayers to save him from the certain doom that is gaining on him.

This is so fucked up.

You angrily stomp onto a branch, crushing it beneath your heel. It’s been hours of you shouting and wandering throughout the woods, completely off the beat and path that you are used to. The usual comforting sounds of the forest at night send chills down your spine. He’s out there. Hunting. Stalking his unknowing prey. You think back to when you were his prey and how that night changed your life. It’s hard to think that it’s already been a month since then. The time was spent getting to know Secondo, fitting yourself into his busy life as Papa and yet — the two of you have never discussed what brought you together.

The Beast.

It had lept off the roof like it was nothing and tore off into the night with inhuman speed. Mid-transformation and all. Perhaps what struck you the most is that it did not even look back at you. Unfounded jealousy could not be contained. Shouldn’t he want to be with you? Even as a bloodthirsty beast? Worst of all, he could be eating someone right now and not in the fun way.

You’ve searched for hours but haven’t come across anything. No tracks, no fur — certainly no screams for help. Hope dwindles. Last ditch effort. You plant your feet on the ground and bring your hands up to your mouth as you howl. You feel foolish but there is nothing else to try. The woods are too large for you to search alone and you are starting to feel the chill of the night in your bones. Another howl explodes from your throat, sounding desperate and raw. You just want him back home with you so he doesn’t hurt anybody. Yes. That’s the main reason. Not that you keep getting cockblocked, this time by the MOON, and if you don’t get to fuck Secondo soon you might explode. Not that at all. You lean against a nearby tree and give it one last shot, one more yowl from deep in your chest.

The monster’s ears prick up, eyes widening and pupils dilated while still remaining fixed on his prey. Colin runs directly into a tree, smashing his nose in the process and stumbles to the ground. He gives a pathetic screech, scrambling backwards but he backs against the solid tree trunk. It snarls and gets on all fours, its cackles raising and snarling deep in its throat. This is it. This is the end. It opens its mouth, bloodstained teeth glistening in the dim light of the moon, and he can feel the foul stench of the beast’s breath in his nostrils. Colin squeezes his eyes shut and presses himself into the tree as far as he possibly can, bracing himself for his fate. There’s more howling off in the distance that makes his blood run cold. He can’t believe he’s going to die on this miserable camping trip — he didn’t even want to go, but was convinced half-heartedly by Jeff. Oh, poor Jeff and Shauna… Colin is babbling crazily to himself when his own morbid curiosity forces him to peek open one eye.

He’s alone.

The wind changes, whipping and whistling. The hair on the back of your neck stands up straight. You shudder but force yourself to walk into the nearby clearing, a full view of the moon. There’s eye on you, you can feel it. Bushes rustle, twigs snap, and something rumbles behind you. Turning around — it’s there and it looks worried. Brows are knitted, head tilted and one ear up while the other is flopped down. It’s almost cute… until you notice the blood smeared along its snout and down its chest. Guilt twists in your stomach. You are too late.

The monster… Secondo inches closer, giving a dramatic huff to pull you from your thoughts. Blinking, you reach out to him, offering your hand. Is this even a good idea? There’s always a chance he could… even after him claiming you. Always quick to assume the worst, you offer a sigh of relief as he presses the side of his face into your palm. His fur is impossibly soft, fingers combing through down his thick neck. The Beast moves in closer, affectionately pressing his head against your chest. You’re overwhelmed with a sense of love for him as your arms curl around him, buried deep in his fur.

“Stay with me tonight. Please.” The words spill out of you, a desperate plea. You’re nearly trembling now that he’s here in your arms and you won’t let go. Not now. Not ever. Secondo whines against your chest, huffs and sweeps you off of your feet. You tumble against his chest as cradles you in his arms and sinks down to the ground. He has your back pinned against his chest, fuzzy arms curled around you and your head tucked beneath his chin. “Ohhhh.” You can’t help it, an immense feeling of comfort and safety washing over you. Warmth spreads deep in your core, face flushed and you wiggle further into his grasp. His heartbeat starts to slow, breathing growing deeper until the snores start.

Sleep takes you both.

You wake up in Secondo’s strong arms wrapped tightly around you, his hips sleepily rocking into you, his half hard cock against your backside. This is new. A soft sigh leaves your lips as you stir beside him. He growls in your ear, his teeth just grazing your lobe and he grinds into you. Hands press against your chest, fingers tips just at your throat as his tongue slithers along your neck. Fuck. You huff, arousal growing deep inside you, and wriggle in his grasp, turning your head to see him. His eyes still glow a faint yellow but that’s all you’re able to see before he crashes his mouth against yours, one of his large hands cradling the side of your face. It’s frantic, messy, like he can’t get enough of you and your taste. There’s blood on his lips and you taste it on his tongue, moaning into the kiss as you continue to squirm your body in his tight grasp. He pulls away, his eyes wide once your chest to chest with him but his hands roam all over your body, grabbing and pinching as his hips continue to cant forward, cock throbbing against your stomach. Secondo’s paint is smeared with red dried blood around his lips and more trails down his thick chest hair. There’s nothing but love and lust in his eyes behind the yellow glow.

“Little bird…” Ragged breath, almost a whine. “Need you so badly.” Secondo buries his face in your neck, biting you hard enough to leave a bruise. Hurts so good. A jolt courses through your body, his bite igniting something primal within you. His hand drops from your face and grabs your hip, fingers pressing hard into where he marked you beneath the fabric of your sweatshirt. You shudder beneath him and start to feverishly tug your shirt up. An animalistic growl rips from him as he pins you to the soft, wet ground and lowers himself to mouth along the scars from his jagged teeth on your newly revealed abdomen. Arching your back, you push your sweats and under down while he trails kisses along your stomach, hungry eyes meeting yours. Secondo rides your sweatshirt up even further, nipping and licking up your stomach and moves his large hands to cup you by the ribs.

“Fuck.” You gasp as his mouth closes around your nipple, sucking the tender flesh with a groan. Pants around your ankles, you kick them off and part them so he can slot himself between you, his cock angled to slide along your slick folds. Blood and paint smears along your breasts as he buries his face between them, his groan vibrating through your chest. Secondo tips his head up to look at you and he’s completely wrecked already, eyelids heavy and eyes glazed over in pure bliss. Your one hand rests on his cheek, thumb wiping away some of his paint and he essentially purrs, shifting up your body so he can look into your eyes and settle himself between your legs. “Fill me. Fill me, please.” You pant into his ear then nibble on the shell of it with a whine.

Secondo can hardly contain himself, a husky groan pouring from his chest. He guides the tip of his cock to your entrance and moves his hand to dig into your ass as he pushes himself inside. Your walls flex around him, fingernails digging into his shoulders, your eyes squeezing shut and lips parting in a silent moan as he deliciously fills you. It’s like nothing you’ve ever felt before. It’s him but he’s in **some sort of in between, not quite Papa and not quite the Beast — but all passion. Even when the Beast took you, he didn’t have this look in his eye like you’re all that matters, all that ever mattered. Devotion. You’re high off of it. Every thrust is a step closer to oblivion. You bury your face against him, drinking him in as you plant wet, open-mouthed kisses up and down his neck.

This is where you’re meant to be. This is where you were always meant to end up. Your destiny.

You climax rips through you, crying out as you see stars and clench around his thick cock. A savage growl and Secondo’s right there with you, filling you up just as you asked him to. He turns to you, his forehead pressed against yours and a hand cupping your cheek as he pants. A moment passes, the both of you catches your breath before he gives you a tender kiss and climbs to his feet.

You sit up and run your fingers through your hair to brush the leaves out of it. There’s a chill in your bones but you instantly warm up as he reaches out to you to help you off the ground. A sleepy smile on his face, content in a way you’ve never seen him before. You can’t help but smile as you take his hand and he tugs you to your feet with ease, draping his arm around your waist.

“Eh… next time we will use the bed, si?”

“Yeah… yeah, next time. Like later today?”

[tasty-ribz]

Give Me Your Best Copper Kiss Chapter 2

AO3 | Chapter 1 | Chapter 2

Dark Cardinal Copia x Dark Reader

You have been invited to meet the Cardinal in his office and you will finally be able to show him that you are everything he needs.

(Please check the tags on AO3 if you aren’t sure about darker themes. No one comes out of this story looking particularly good. You have been warned)

You wake up the next morning more content then you can ever remember. During the night you had been gifted more visions by the Dark Lord of you by your Cardinals side. Him leading mass in papal paints and vestments you by his side, all the other siblings bowing and scraping at your feet as you lead the Ministry to ever greater heights. You rise quickly eager to get the day underway. The sooner it starts the sooner the time of your meeting will arrive.

You pass through the day in a haze barely paying attention to anything or anyone around you. After tonight all this will all be beneath you. Never again will you be banished to the draughty corner of the library. Never again will you be forced to engage with the prattle of the siblings. At dinner your attention is caught by the sister from the previous evening. Her little gang is crowded around her in an almost protective manner. She looks meeker than usual and you can't help a shiver of satisfaction at seeing her and knowing what had brought her so low. Your Cardinal is absent from dinner this evening but you can see her looking around as if expecting him to approach her again.

As if that was likely. Your Cardinal had taken what he wanted from her and with your meeting imminent he would hardly have a use for that sister again. You try to distract yourself but dinner seems to drag, just an obstacle keeping you away from your Cardinal. But you persevere so as not to give him an advantage over you. Arriving at his office early would not give the impression you desired. 

A few minutes before the designated time you begin to make your way to the clergy offices. You keep your steps measured but purposeful. You are going to meet your destiny and anyone who should see you should be able to tell. You approach his door filled with a sense of calm. You raise your hand to knock but the sounds from within stay your hand. Sister Imperators voice is distinct but what she is saying lights a fire inside you. 

'Everything is set in motion Cardinal. You must be ready to ascend as soon as …' The rest of what she says is drowned out by the buzzing sound in your ears. If he is to ascend that could only be to the role of Papa. You couldn't believe how easily things were falling into place. You were the Dark Lord's chosen companion for the future Papa Emeritus IV. 

Their meeting must have ended while you were lost in your thoughts and you fail to notice the door opening until you are face to face with Sister Imperator. 

'It seems you have a visitor, Cardinal.' You snap back to attention, bowing your head to the Sister. Aside from your Cardinal she was the only other person in the ministry that had earned your respect with her dedication. 

She gives you a cursory glance, one eyebrow raised in question looking between yourself and your Cardinal before stepping through the door allowing you to enter the office. She closes the door behind her but not before giving the Cardinal a look that makes him roll his eyes. In that moment he almost looks like a teenager being scolded by a parent. 

He was sat behind his desk slouched in his chair. His usually perfectly smoothed back hair is falling out if place as through he had been running his fingers through it in frustration. You can sympathise. He must be eager to take control to set the clergy on the right course. So little had changed since he first arrived despite his efforts but now you would be able to help. Help him fulfil the Dark Lord's purpose, help him bring the rest of the Ministry into line, but also help ease his tension.

'You seem frustrated Cardinal.' He looked up at you where you stood on the opposite side of his desk. You glanced at the chair just vacated by Sister Imperator but decided against taking a seat. Instead you slowly moved to his side, opting to lean against the desk between his splayed legs. He had pushed his chair back so far that there was almost an appropriate amount of space between you. You hoped that wouldn't be the case for long.

Your intention had been to just talk with him this evening. You wanted him, desperately, especially after what you had witnessed the previous evening but you had wanted show him you weren't like the others. So caught up in their petty sinning they lost sight of the greater purpose. But being alone with him for the first time, it is affecting you more than you anticipated. You have been aroused since the door was closed and a hook in your chest was pulling you to get closer and closer to him. It could only be the influence of your Dark Lord so you allow yourself to succumb. Who are you to disobey his will?

Your Cardinals eyes followed you but he didn't respond yet. He did enjoy making you work for him but you were up to the task. 'Perhaps you should have made more use of that slut yesterday. She would have done anything you asked, begged for it in fact.' You can see your words affect him as he shifts in his chair and the corner of his mouth pulls up in a cruel smirk.

'I think I used her well enough. She didn't deserve to receive anymore from me then she did. She didn't take her punishment with grace but perhaps you can help relieve me now si?.' You hadn't been prepared for the intensity of his mismatched gaze. He has you entirely enthralled and you can't help moving closer at his suggestion. 

Before you really register you are standing over him as close as you can get without crawling into his lap. You look down hardly believing that you are finally here and you can see the outline of his hard cock straining to be released from his already tight trousers. You knew he felt the same as you and it is gratifying to see the physical evidence. 

You reach forward and slide your fingers into his hair, smoothing the out of place strands back into place and he shivers subtly at the contact. You kneel either side of his legs straddling his lap but not quite resting against him fully yet. You can't take your eyes off of his as you lean down and bring your faces closer and closer. You are so close now you are breathing each other's air and the tension is so thick you can't move. So he does and something in you snaps.

He bites your lip. Hard. And your mouth fills with the taste of copper. You seal your lips over his and let him taste it too. You feel entirely base in this moment, only moving on animal instinct. You rip his shirt open to get access to more skin and drag your nails across his chest and feel him hiss into your mouth only pulling away to admire the criss cross of red lines you left behind. While you're distracted he gets a hold on your hair pulling your face back level with his. 

‘You're a wild little puttana, eh?’. He slaps you. Hard. And you feel another break in the skin of your mouth. You think about what you must look like, blood stained teeth bared in a part snarl part grin. You stare into his wild eyes sure he must be feeling this too. Like you are finally whole, like you can finally fulfil your potential. 

‘You want me to fuck you si?' You saw the Sorella getting my cock and you want some for yourself?’ He’s trying to make you beg like that pathetic girl did. But no, you do not beg and he will give you what you want and it will be so much more than what he gave to that pathetic little sister.

‘You are going to fuck me Cardinal and then we will become one.’ He pulls back from you slightly but you are already zeroing in on his erection and trying to free it from his trousers.

Your hands reach for the fastenings as he lets go of your hair to try and grasp your wrists and halt your progress. ‘You think you have earned it? The Sorella begged for me.’ You twist your arms and manage to free one hand to continue your progress. You laugh at him, like there are any similarities between you and her. 

You have never felt so exhilarated by a partner before. Every time you push he pushes right back in a constant battle of wills but it is just causing the heat inside of you to burn hotter and hotter as if your impending union was taking place in the fires of Hell itself.

‘I need to earn nothing. I am not some simpering sister and I will not beg. I take what I want, Copia.’ His trousers are open finally and you pull him out. His cock looks even better up close and you can’t wait any longer. You use your hand to work him quickly, spitting into your palm to help ease the way. A part of you wants it to hurt though you had always found a certain amount of pain made the pleasure all the sweeter. 

He is fighting you again for control. The wrist still caught in his grasp ends up twisted behind you as he pulls you against him trying to limit your movements but you still have enough leverage to sink down onto him using your free hand to line his cock up to your entrance. 

Once he is buried to the hilt he relinquishes your arm but moves his biting grip to your hips in an attempt to control your movements from there. You resist his guidance as much as you can trying to adjust to the stretch and relish in the intense pleasure and pain you are experiencing. You lean down to press a bruising kiss to his mouth as you start to move half expecting him to resist you but he opens up pushing his tongue into your mouth.

The tussle for power sends you into a frenzy. This is why you were brought here, why the Cardinal was brought here, what the Dark Lord had planned for you all along. To find your equal. Equally as powerful, equally as devout and equally as ruthless The way you were instantly drawn to him it was the only possible explanation. The things you could achieve together. If any could achieve the lofty goals of the Clergy it was the two of you. Successfully dominating the world in a way you were unable to dominate each other. 

While your mind had been racing you had been riding him slowly, deeply feeling him rearrange you from the inside. The only way you would ever submit to him. You see the frustration building behind his eyes and you want to break his control. 

‘Move’ he growls. It’s not going to take much so you don’t bother to reply. You stare at him, definitely maintaining your slow steady rock. It’s not enough for you either but you are not going to be the first to crack. He lets out another guttural sound and you know it won't be long now. 

And then he is pushing up from the chair slamming you back into the desk. You feel all the books, pens and trinkets digging into your back, the discomfort makes you writhe but then he has found his feet and he is fucking you so hard you can’t focus on anything else. 

It’s brutal and it’s perfect, your orgasm is building slowly but you feel almost past that floating in an ecstasy you had never experienced before. You call out to Satan as you reach your peak. No one but Him deserves your praise in this moment, having brought you everything you’ve ever wanted. You are so wrapped up in your bliss that you barely notice him finishing and pulling out of you before you are already completely empty. 

You pull yourself upright to see him already righting his clothes. He is muttering under his breath about the state of his shirt buttons before giving up on it and pulling it off, replacing it with another from the cupboard in the corner. After a few moments he turns back to you but all the wild emotion is gone. There is a shuttered expression on his face. That was not what you were expecting. 

‘You may leave now,’ he says without looking at you, starting to right the mess of items on his desk.

You laugh, he must be joking. Perhaps he does have a sense of humour after all. ‘Of course I’m not leaving. We have so much to discuss now that we have finally found each other.’ 

‘I am unaware what gave you the impression I wished to know anything more about you but let me disavow you of this notion.’ He still hasn’t looked at you. You feel a pit opening in your stomach. Surely he had felt it too. ‘You were just another willing hole for me to use for my pleasure and now your use has been fulfilled, si?’ He is looking at you now, no mirth in his expression.  

‘No that’s not what happened,’ you are so confused. ‘Didn’t you feel it?’ 

‘I feel nothing because there is nothing. I have no interest in your pathetic fascination with me and I have no need for a disobedient puttana who acts above themselves.’ 

‘But the Dark Lord brought us here so we could bring about his accession. As soon as I saw you I knew. We were meant to do this, together.’ Why can’t he see it? Why won’t he listen? 

He just laughs at you. ‘You think the Dark Lord has a special role for you? A washed up sibling who reached their highest potential the day they joined the church? The Clergy, they speak of you often, you know. About what a disappointment you are to the Church. Why do you think they banished you to that awful little corner of the library?’ He was smirking at you. Why was he looking at you like that? You felt a pain twisting in your heart like every word he spoke was a stab wound. But no he was wrong. They were all wrong. 

‘The Clergy don’t know shit! They would have us wither away into obscurity while they argue whether Papa winning a Grammy was a good thing or not. They are the ones not living up to their potential, failing Him!’ You had to make him see. 

He slapped you again, knocking you to the floor this time. ‘You should watch how you speak, you ignorant fica. You think anyone in your position would be privy to the plans of the Clergy. Now get out of my sight before I have a mind to punish you properly. And don’t think to approach me again, ever. I should not have even given you this much.’  

You start to shake. How could he say such things? The Dark Lord has made you for each other. A perfect match for everything either of you needed. You had known since you had first met, the certainty settling into your gut as you had locked eyes on that fateful day. He would defy the Dark Lord himself. The entity you were sworn to serve. No you could not accept this.

‘Copia,’ you start, feeling sick to your stomach. Maybe this was just part of his game. A way to get you to finally beg. You can’t let it end like this, not when you know with every fibre of your being that you are meant for each other.

‘You address me as Cardinal. If you must address me at all. And I’m sure I said GET OUT’ He slammed his fists against the desk, all the items he had began tidying falling into disarray, some even tumbling to the floor. His eyes are so hard and cold you suddenly feel doused in icy water. How dare he after what you just shared. Why can’t he see the truth? You have to make him see.

‘You shouldn’t speak to me that way you will regret it.’ You want to stand up, to challenge him eye to eye but there is no strength in your limbs.

‘Hah regret, si. I am feeling regret now that I ever acknowledged your existence. If I knew it would cause these delusions. In fact I will be speaking to Sister Imperator about having you removed from your position immediately. This may be the Church of Satan but we have no need for the likes of you.’ He stares down at you and there is nothing. He means it. Why is he being so cruel? Why doesn’t he see? You look down, not able to bear the look on his face any longer. The glint of something catches your eye under the desk. A letter opener must have dropped in the frenzy.

‘Patetica.’ He spits down at you and something in you breaks once more. You’re up on your feet in an instant but he moves to push you aside about to make good on his threat to go to the Clergy. And you can’t have that.

The blade pierces his throat and he ceases all movement, eyes going wide and round. He tries to speak but can only choke on the blood bubbling in his mouth. You put your hands on his shoulders and guide him back into the chair behind him. He looks at you in shock and awe, you think, finally seeing your truth. One of his hands is cupping his throat, a futile attempt to stem the flow of blood while the other grips the blades handle. You lean forward and place a gentle kiss on his forehead but he jerks back away from you. 

Even now with his life draining out and choking him he would defy you, deny your bond. You grab the hair at the back of his head and force him to look up at you. He lets out a pained gurgle protesting the movement with the blade still buried deep inside him. There are tears streaming from his eyes now, black streaks forming on his cheeks and mixing with the blood gathering at the corners of his lips. You can’t decide if he looks pathetic or beautiful. 

You hear his breathing change, becoming more laboured. It sounds wet and shallow and you wonder if he is drowning in his own blood. His hands have finally dropped, having lost the strength to hold them up. You give him one last copper kiss while there is still light left in his eyes.

‘I’ll see you in Hell, Cardinal,’ and then he is gone. 

You sit yourself in his lap and wrap your arms around him pulling his lifeless head to your chest. Perhaps this is what the Dark Lord intended you to do. Send one of his most faithful servants to him directly. Perhaps Copia wasn’t ready to give himself over as you were. You did not know his reasons and you did not need to. His unholy will had guided you on this path and you were content. 

And content you stayed wrapped around the remnants of your soul's other half until you felt the first rays of the morning sun greet you through the window. You left him then knowing it would not be long until he was found. 

You met no one as you walked the quiet corridors to your room. You made no effort to hide the evidence of your act and it was only a matter of time until they discovered your involvement in the Copia's fate. 

Once you arrived you slowly disrobed leaving your soiled clothes in a pile at the centre of the room before moving to the bathroom. You had to be at your post in the library soon so you would have to wash away the evidence of your activities but as you look at yourself in the mirror you want to enjoy it a while longer. His come was still seeping out of you and his blood was covering your hands and face. Even though you knew his soul was already in Hell you felt so close to him with so much evidence of his life displayed on your skin. 

You wet a small towel and ring it out then slowly run it over you wiping it all away. By the time you were finished the water was dripping pink from the towel and you felt a twist of grief that you no longer bore his marks. You completed your morning routine so you would be fit to leave your room as normal. 

It all started with whispers. You could hear them as you toyed with your breakfast. The Cardinal. He’s been found dead in his office. The morning was frantic, siblings running back and forth to spread the news, or huddled in groups scared to be caught alone with a murderer lose in the Abbey.

You left then unable to stomach anymore, of the food or the talk. They did not know what had truly been lost, the potential destroyed by his own ignorance. If only he would have listened to you. Things could have been different. But there was no use dwelling on it now. You knew you would be reunited when you eventually arrived in Hell, just as the Dark Lord had intended.  

Imperator found you not much later in your usual spot in the back of the library, flanked by Copia’s ghouls. They were angry. You could tell, so there was little point explaining yourself. And you certainly weren’t going to deny your involvement. Her hands and her usually pristine white shirt were still covered in his blood and from the look on her face you thought you may be joining him in Hell even sooner then you had anticipated. 

'Why did you do it?' She was shaking with barely contained emotion. You had known her and Copia were close but as you look at her face now you suspect there was a lot more than anyone ever knew. Her eyes are red and puffy, tear tracks evident on her cheeks. As you take her in you see black marks amongst the red covering her shirt as though she held his body to her chest as you did.

You feel some kinship with her then, almost sorry that you were putting her through such pain. You had both cared for Copia in your own ways. 'He wouldn't listen Sister.' You had more of an explanation you could give her but you won't.

 'He was the brightest hope for the Ministry and you killed him. Why?' She was choking on her emotions as she spoke. No one understood. He was your other half but you still didn't regret what you had done. Not with the Dark Lord guiding your hand. 

You try one last time to make her understand. 'I know Sister but he wouldn’t listen. He …' She raises her hand to stop you and you know her emotions have got the better of her. You almost want to role your eyes but stop yourself at the last minute. Why are you the only one here who is willing to look at the bigger picture? Who was truly dedicated to your Dark Lord? 

You tire of the conversation now picking up your book. You notice Sister Imperator turn to leave but the ghouls stay where they are, eyes still fixed on you. You turn a page and then they are on you. Before you can react you are on the floor, pinned to the ground. You feel sharp claws digging into your throat cutting off your air flow but they don’t stop there. The pressure steadily increases and you feel your skin break, tearing open your throat. The pain fades quickly as you feel your blood filling your lungs and it is fitting that you would leave the mortal realm in the same way as Copia. Your vision slowly blacks out and your last thought is of your reunion at the side of Lucifer himself and you smile.

[tasty-ribz]

Sorry kids it's over

my autistic brain won

Now seestor imperator lives rent free

in my sweatpants pocker as a print

I made her transparent go put her places

[tasty-ribz]

Hey fandom! Whats u... .... ..p

[tasty-ribz]

when true love's kiss

Papa Emeritus III x Reader | Papa Emeritus III x OC

from this slumber you shall wake | AO3

After waking up in his glass coffin Papa has travelled back to the Abbey in search of something he needs to regain his true strength. This is a sequel to from this slumber you shall wake and for @petrifyingpapas resurrection prompt

TW for choking and murder

It was a nightly procession, a ritual completed in reverence to her lover. Her dead lover. It begins as the sun starts to dip beneath the horizon, sitting at the half empty vanity she applies his paint in slow steady strokes. Her dull eyes staring out of his face, the familiar paint only causing a dull throb in her heart where once it had inspired overwhelming love, then after, overwhelming despair. She had learned the shapes and contours painting his face before his rituals, mass, meetings. It was a small intimacy, one of many they had shared but she had always preferred helping him wash it away. Removing Papa and revealing her lover underneath. The man only she got to see. No more though. When she washed the paint away she only saw her own ashen face. He would forever be resting as Papa or at least she thought.    

As darkness falls across the room she affixes her veil draping the dark material over her face, the delicate lace pooling around her waist as she sits. Her reflection shows the shadow she has become, her old life just a silhouette underneath a shroud of darkness. She adds the final touch, pulling on her gloves lace covering the last glimpses of skin, the golden claws another signature of his, glinting in the muted light. She must stare at herself for a moment longer sitting motionless, where her gaze lands is lost in the shadow but what else is there to see but herself. Suddenly she stands and the next stage of her ritual begins. 

She walks through the corridors like a ghost. If you really tried you might hear the whisper of her skirts against the tile but you couldn’t distinguish her footsteps or the choked sobs that rise from within her. Any siblings lingering in the hallways move aside lest they interrupt her procession now, long since startled by her presence. It had been a shock the first time they had witnessed this ritual. The once warm and charming Prime Mover, dead in all but body along with her Papa. No one saw her for weeks after and then she began her mourning ritual which continued and then continued until now, a year on from his murder she still hadn’t ceased.

Her procession ends in the Chapel of Lilith now, but she had worked her way through them all. Satan, Belial then Lucifer, Belezebub, Asmodeous, then Behemoth but her prayers had not been heeded. None had borne witness to her nightly vigils, leaving her to commune with her chosen demon in privacy, but it was not hard to guess at the subject of her prayers. For him to be returned to her, for her to be able to join him in hell, for the ones responsible to receive their due punishment but when she had finally seemed to give up hope for an answer to her prayers she took solace with Lillith. 

She kneels before the statue as is her usual custom, her bare feet visible now under her layers of skirts, a surprise given her carefully layered dress but perhaps she needs some way to feel grounded, just that small connection to the reality she is forced to live in now without her Papa. Her reminder that she is still here and still alive even if she doesn’t feel like it. Her head is bowed, the long veil obscuring most of her body now she has made herself small before Lilith praying for the strength to go on. Although she has followed all the same steps, completed all the same measures, there is something different about this night. A year on from his death to the day there is a finality in her manner as she prays. Is it that her mourning period is coming to a close? She has spoken to none but the demons she had begged for relief since she learned of his demise but as she whispers her mysterious requests to the mother of all evil her body begins to shake. The rosary that had been clutched in between her fingers clatters to the floor as her prayer ends as she slowly, carefully draws up the front of her veil revealing her painted face, the silent tears she had wept leaving wet grey streaks in their path. Her eyes are locked on the statue as if waiting for something to happen. 

A rush of wind fills the chapel whipping around her, her veil and clothes disturbed by its strength and just before it dies every candle in the room extinguishes simultaneously; the only light left is the muted beam of moonlight shining through the window above the altar. A haze of smoke from the candles hangs in the air as she twists and turns looking for the cause of the sudden gusts but in her frantic search she misses the slow moving shadow at the end of the pews. Turning back to the statue she stares up at unmoving face, scrabbling to pick up her discarded rosary without taking her eyes off it.

‘What does it mean?’ Her voice is broken and dry from disuse and her suddenly dry mouth. She had wanted a sign, whether she should move on, give up hope, try to just keep him as a fond memory and had been given this. ‘Please what does it mean?’ The tears that never really stopped cascade down her cheeks, her shock and confusion overwhelming her after all this time. 

‘It means you have been loyal.’ She freezes when she hears his voice not even remembering to breathe. It must be a trick she would recognise that voice anywhere but it just couldn’t be. His heavy footsteps echo through the otherwise silent room and she can almost sense the disturbance of the air, everything else is so still as if in anticipation of their reunion. ‘It means mia regina,’ she shudders every memory of him calling her that running through her mind at once. ‘That you will be able to help your Papa return to this world and take back what is rightfully his.’

She turns to him slowly where he has come to a stop conveniently in the pool of moonlight. As much as this is what she had been praying for she seemed almost reluctant to look at him, scared of what she might see. He is alive, somehow, that is obvious, but something about him is very wrong. There is a stiffness to how he holds himself upright and his eyes are no longer filled with love and joy and life just malice. 

‘Terzo,’ she sighs, an acceptance that he really is standing there in front of her as haggard as he looks. His vestments are creased, his paint flaking away. He looks exactly like he has been laid in state for a year. ‘How?’ The shock and her lack of practice speaking make it almost impossible to articulate anything more. He smiles, well smirks, there is no warmth there but it draws over his face almost in slow motion, like the muscles need time to remember how to react to his body's commands. 

‘Someone wished very hard for me to be returned to them, no matter the cost.’ He continues coming closer, his jerky uneven steps getting more sure the more he moves. Still on her knees she crawls back until she is sat at the base of the statue, hoping that Lilith will heed her prayers one more time, her instinct told her she would need it more than ever. When he reaches the altar steps he collapses with none of his natural grace, bracing himself on his hands and hissing in pain, his joints unnaturally stiff from his time at rest. But he continues on towards her until he is close enough to touch.

‘You missed me amore?’ He whispers and she winces at the understatement. 

‘Yes,’ She hadn’t just missed him, her whole existence had ground to a halt. She wanted so desperately to reach out and touch him, confirm that he was truly there, real and in front of her but something stayed her hand.  

‘You prayed for me?’ His face is cast in shadow now and looks all the more sinister for it. Up this close she could see his muscles twitching to maintain his expression like someone else was trying to control them.

‘Yes,’ She twists her rosary between her fingers, the clicking of the beads drawing his attention before his hand closes over hers, stilling her nervous fidgeting. Feeling his touch even through the gloves steals the breath from her lungs.

‘Then help me finish what you started?’ He dips his head drawing her attention away from where his hand clasps hers.

‘How?’ The smile he wears grows at her lack of dismissal anticipating that she will agree to his demands.

‘Give yourself to me.’ She nods slowly unsure of exactly what he meant but as she looked into his eyes she saw a glimpse of the man she loved, something inside of him begging and pleading her to help him and she knew she would do anything he asked. He reaches for her with his gloved hand cupping the back of her neck, drawing her towards him. She can feel how warm he is through the tight leather and the pinprick pressure of his nails transports her back to memories of smooth soft leather contrasting with the cold sharp nails as he stripped her leaving his mark on her bare skin night after night. 

He barely has to guide her now she is caught in his trap, she comes easily kneeling up to meet him halfway. His distinctive scent, though stale, fills her senses and she is ensnared. He could ask anything of her and she would do everything in her power to grant it. She thought or perhaps hoped that he would kiss her, help her remember the feeling of him against her once again, but first she felt his other hand circle her neck and it seemed to break her from her reverie. She tried to pull back, eyes widening in shock but he had regained more strength than he had let on and as his grip tightened she could not break free. 

Her windpipe was closing and his sharp nails bit into her skin sharply as he squeezed tighter and tighter. She clawed at his wrists trying anything to lessen his grip but he did not falter his wide manic eyes boring into hers. As panic began to take hold she reached for his face, his eyes anything to allow her to breath but even as she managed to slice his cheek he didn’t flinch so set on her destruction. As her vision tunnelled, her body shutting down due to lack of oxygen she realised what he had needed all along. He needed her life. She was foolish to wish for his return, naïve to think it would come at no cost. In her grief she had forgotten the fundamentals of the world, the balance that must always be maintained. All the fight left her then, if her life was what he wanted then he could take it, she had spent the last year living as a shadow now she could allow the darkness to embrace her completely. His cruel victorious smile is the last thing she sees as her vision dims, acknowledging her surrender and the last thing she feels before everything else fades away is the press of his rough lips, so soft in comparison to his deadly grip but she clung to that feeling knowing it would sustain her wherever it was she would end up. 

You watch him kneel over her body, lying her back gently as her life force leaves her, flowing into him in twisting translucent tendrils. You keep quiet not wanting to interrupt his moment. He didn’t seem sad though. He had been resigned about what he must do as you had surreptitiously travelled here to the Abbey, almost sullen and disinterested with all your questions. But once he was on the grounds it was like he was possessed with a new vigour. Perhaps returning to the location of his murder had impassioned him but you could see the difference almost instantly. He had been most impatient with you as you had slotted back into Abbey life so you could report back to him. Nothing you did was good enough but perhaps now he would be happy with you. You had delivered him the final piece of his plan. The soul of his Prime Mover. He had never explained to you exactly why he needed it. You had offered him yours and he had only scoffed but seeing your disappointment he softened slightly explaining that it was not your role to sacrifice yourself for him, not yet any way, that he had much bigger plans for you. Your heart had swollen with pride at that, that he would entrust you with such important tasks but he was hard to please and you tried so so hard. He straightens up leaving her prone at the foot of the statue ending your time for rumination. 

‘We need to leave now, little one.’ He sounds stronger already and any lingering regret you had about her fate fades away. She had been wasting her life anyway; her soul would be much better served empowering her Papa.  

‘Do you want me to do anything with her?’ She was in a better place now but part of you wondered whether it was right to just leave her there but he turns on you with a fire in his eyes. 

‘No let them find her. Let them guess at what power I now possess. Let her be a warning. I wonder if they will heed it.’ He looks down at her tracing along the smudged lines of their shared face paint. ‘She was so beautiful. It was a shame it had to come to this but I need to be at full strength for what is to come.’ He stands movements much more fluid, he looks healthier, more alive now and you marvel at him. The more you learn, the more you see, the more you crave his presence and his approval. When you had gazed at him through the glass you had never dreamed you would get to be his right hand, his confidant yet here you are helping him to steal away into the night, back into hiding until he was ready to make his next move. As you hold the door for him you notice him pause, looking back at her. He is right, she was beautiful you think. She is bathed in moonlight now, laying as a beautiful sacrifice at the altar of Lilith but when you look at him you see the first hints of sadness.  

‘Did you love her Papa?’ He looks away but pauses before he answers.

‘Maybe, once, but what was more important was that she loved me. That was all that I needed.’ There is resignation, you think in his voice rather than regret but you hate to see him feeling that way at all. You believe he must do what he needs to do even if he will not yet reveal his reasons to you.

‘I love you Papa.’ You sense at this moment he needs that reminder.

‘I know little one and you still have your role to play.’ He turns away after one last long look at his past love but you reach for his hand as you notice the darkness beginning to lift. A rich sense of satisfaction fills you as you hurry into the dawn. She was his past but you were his future. 

[tasty-ribz]

Sketchy Terzito in between comms

[tasty-ribz]

Happy boop day from little meow meow

would boop that snoot

[tasty-ribz]

Finally finished this DTIYS @quaildoodle challenge and it turned out amazing, the stained glass portion took the longest to draw and color and did a custom pattern for the blue parts of the robes.

like to thank @tasty-ribz for the composition suggestion, it really helped me out.

[tasty-ribz]

Of Lemon Tarts and Tiny White Rabbits

Secondo, Earl of Griftwood, cannot believe his eyes when a tiny white rabbit scampers into his study. He is stunned even more when he meets the lovely owner of the pet – and promptly falls in love.

pairing: secondo x female!reader // regency AU

content: 4.6k words, regency AU (not 100% historically accurate but I tried), pov third person, forbidden romance, age gap, first kisses, social hierarchies, mildly suggestive at times, soft!secondo, pining and yearning etc., wingman terzo

This is a birthday present for the lovely @tasty-ribz , also special thanks to @angellayercake for allowing me to bring Snowbell into this story ✨🐰

Masterlist – Ao3 link

The curtains sway gently in the soft breeze that carries a fragrant spring air into his study. Secondo lifts his gaze to take in the lovely view through the open double doors which lead to a balcony and the well-kept gardens of Emeritus Manor. Lush rose bushes climb up the stone walls and wrap around the railings, dark green speckled with the pink of countless flowers. Somewhere in the trees the birds break out in song, their melodic chirping a pleasant background noise that accompanies him as he maintains his correspondence.

After this short reprieve for his eyes, he dips the quill back into the black pot of ink on his bureau. A few more letters and he can settle outside in the shade for his afternoon tea, perhaps even indulge and allow himself a lemon tart to go with it. He can’t remember hiring a new cook and yet he swears the smell of freshly baked pastries has filled the halls of the estate more frequently as of late, their taste tempting even him who is usually not one for desserts.

A movement in his peripheral vision distracts him momentarily but when he looks up there is nothing unusual to be seen. Secondo watches the curtains, assuring himself that it must have been the wind playing tricks on him. With a frown on his face, he focuses back on his letters. After a moment, however, he glances back up, suddenly sensing a presence in the room. When he still cannot detect anything out of the ordinary, he assumes that it must have been a ghost wandering the old halls of the manor – it would not be the first time.

Over the scratching sounds of his quill he almost misses the tiny squeak that passes his ears only a moment later. A mouse? No ghosts that haunt him after all. He lets his eyes roam the walls that are lined with bookshelves, trying to spot any scurrying movements on the elaborately patterned rug that muffles the sound. At last, he glances down to his feet and surprise takes over his stern features.

A white baby rabbit sits next to his shoe, its tiny pink nostrils moving rapidly as it sniffs the leather with utmost interest. The creature cannot be bigger than his palm. Where could it possibly come from? As far as he is aware, they do not keep any rabbits, let alone breed them.

“Snowbell?” The voice that suddenly sounds from the balcony is soft and melodic, a young woman he cannot quite place. “Snowbell, where did you go?”

Her figure appears in the frame a mere moment later and she flinches back when she spots Secondo at his desk through the open doors. She immediately averts her eyes, her hair falling into her face and covering her features.

“Please, forgive me for the disturbance, my lord.”

“There is nothing to forgive,” he replies. “I understand you are looking for this little troublemaker here?” 

Secondo leans down to pick up the rabbit. Indeed it fits neatly into his gloved palm and he regrets that he cannot feel the soft fur against his fingers. The bunny breathes rapidly, its small body excited or scared, he cannot quite tell.

“Oh, you found her! Thank the lord, I thought she was lost forever.”

“Will you relieve me of her, then? She seems quite restless.”

The young woman who he cannot remember seeing before cautiously enters and with a lowered gaze approaches his desk. Secondo admires her for a moment, her striking complexion and the mesmerising way with which hair shimmers in the golden sunlight. Young and innocent, the daughter of a servant perhaps if the state of her dress is any indication. Yet it does not diminish her beauty nor her youthful radiance; he can tell that she is perhaps five-and-twenty.

She reaches for the bunny and he hands it over the desk, feeling her fingers brushing against his. Again he regrets the barrier between his skin and the world around him but even so he can tell that the heat has risen to her cheeks. She does not seem to be used to the presence of her superiors. He’s well aware of his reputation as a rather reserved and intimidating employer.

“I am not certain that I know your name,” he says before she can scurry off, skittish like the tiny animal that appears a little taller now in her smaller hands.

She replies with her name and a curtsy, not quite lady-like in practice but Secondo can tell that she must have enjoyed a good upbringing. Perhaps she has experience working for nobility.

“Where do you belong to, my girl?”

“I am François’s daughter, my lord.”

“Ah, sì, the new gardener?”

“Yes, my lord.”

He nods, watching her pet the rabbit with her slender fingers as if to calm herself. “And how do you like it here?”

“It is extraordinarily beautiful, my lord. The estate is magnificent and I quite enjoy the work in the kitchens.”

“The kitchens? So it is you who prepares these scrumptious lemon tarts?”

She nods, smiling a bit shyly. “It is a French recipe, my lord. My mother taught me how to make it when I was a wee girl and she worked for the Earl of Carlisle.”

“Are there any lemon tarts today, per chance?”

“I made a fresh batch just this morning, my lord.”

“Wonderful. Now, bring your Snowbell to safety before she scuttles away again.”

“Thank you most kindly, my lord. I promise to be more careful when I take her outside.”

He watches the young woman’s retreating form, reminding himself not to covet what he should not have. It is quite hard at the sight of such a sublime creature, though he rarely allows himself to indulge in thoughts of his carnal desires. The way she takes care of the animal tells him that she has a kind soul and how he could he ever taint it with his rotten hands?

Secondo stands to take his afternoon tea, looking forward to a generous serving of the fresh lemon tarts. He closes the balcony doors before he departs, his correspondence quite forgotten.

✦ ✧ ✦

He is too absorbed in his brother’s letter to notice the music at first.

When he finally does Secondo stops in the middle of the hallway. Rarely does he hear such sweet sounds these days, busy with politics and finances as he is. Ever since inheriting his father’s title as the Earl of Griftwood he is subjected to ball music, loud opera pieces and the talentless daughters of the other lords of the ton. 

This subdued private concert is much more to his liking. 

He folds the letter and pockets it before investigating the source of the music. Primo has written to him from Italy where his clerical duties keep him occupied. Secondo is relieved to learn that his brother is in good health and filling his new role as the leader of their secret church for which he has forsaken his role as the head of their family. A title that has now fallen to Secondo.

Following the trail of the music carries him further down the hall until he stops in front of a double door that stands slightly ajar. The sitting room beyond is abandoned safe for the person who has taken up residence behind the pianoforte and is now delighting the house with their pleasant tunes. Secondo is not one to swoon but when he discovers the gardener’s daughter, watching as her fingers glide over the keys in an elegant dance, he is quite taken with the sight of her. 

It is only after quite some time that he spots the rabbit in her lap.

The piece ends all too soon but Secondo cannot bring himself to reveal his position. He watches on as she lifts Snowbell and places her tiny paws on the keys, playing an easy melody as she giggles and compliments her pet’s musical talent. He thinks that the snow white rabbit is an emblem of her most becoming properties – her soft and lovely presence, her gentle disposition and ethereal beauty. Two creatures that heaven must have forged together. Not for a moment does he think he could ever be worthy of her, no matter if his nobility raises him above her in this strict society. She transcends the rules of birthright and social rank, rules that he has always rejected, if not openly. Perhaps this is why he feels so drawn to her – she represents all that he has ever longed for, all that they strive to achieve with their church of Lucifer.

“I did not know we had a musician in the house,” he finally comments. “Or need I say two musicians?”

She jumps, again, startled by his domineering presence that takes over the room the moment he steps inside. After a few deep breaths she recovers and offers a polite greeting. Snowbell sits in her hand now, no bigger than a baby chick and just as restless. Her head rises as if to greet him as well, tiny button eyes shimmering not without mischief.

“Your brother told me it was okay for me to practice in here and that it is his instrument–”

“I am sorry, my dove, I did not mean to accuse you of anything untoward. Of course you may practice your music in here. We have been deprived of such beautiful sounds for way too long with no ladies in the house.”

Her shoulders sink in relief, the tension finally leaving her. “I hear that his lordship is quite a gifted musician himself. As are his brothers.”

“Ah, sì, sì, if only there was more time for it. I find that without pleasant company I cannot persuade myself to dedicate the time.” He steps further inside the room and takes a seat on one of the velvet settees, moderately close to where she’s now lowering herself back on her stool. His black breeches strain over his thighs and he adjusts his emerald green waistcoat that has ridden up, rights the knot in his cravat. “You play well, piccina. How did you come to master the pianoforte?”

“I may not be of noble upbringing, my lord, but my parents used all their means to ensure that I was educated, perhaps more than befits my station.” Her voice is sharp, not unfriendly but defensive nonetheless. “A person’s rank in society does not determine their talent for musical play.”

“I apologise if I offended your sensibilities, my dove. I did not mean to imply that your origin should have anything to do with your capability of learning an instrument.”

“No apologies are needed, my lord. It is true that such opportunities are not provided to many of my status. I cherish my privileges every day.”

Her eloquence and quick wit impress him, the dignified countenance with which she holds herself even in the face of an older man much above her in station. It would be easy to think that she is a noble lady, if it weren’t for her lack of fine clothing and jewellery. He fights off the urge to accoutre her, to dress her in the finest garments he can find in all of London and Paris or Rome. How lovely she would look with her hair done up, her slender neck exposed for his eyes alone. 

And not just for his eyes.

Before he can inquire any further, Snowbell suddenly leaps from her lap. The rabbit lands on the soft carpet and scampers over towards the settee on her tiny legs.

“Oh, not again Snowbell,” the girl laments, but then she notices the rabbit’s direction and smiles softly. “I suppose she has taken a liking to you, my lord.”

“I hope she is not the only one,” he counters, allowing himself this moment of reverie.

Flustered, she averts her gaze, reacting in much the same way that he hoped she would. “Who could not be taken with him when his lordship is so very generous and kind of heart?”

Secondo smiles to himself as he leans down to pick up the cheeky rabbit, removing one of his dark leather gloves to finally feel the softness of her fur.  “How did you come in possession of such an animal?” he finds himself asking. “She is quite unusual, no?”

“Oh, my father was engaged to work for another noble house in the city just before we came here and he found a nest in their garden. Snowbell was the only white rabbit of the litter. While the children of the house were allowed to keep the other rabbits they thought her cursed and wanted to kill her. I begged him to let me save her and bring her here.”

How charitable, he thinks, saving those who are unwanted, those who are abandoned by God, not differentiating between human or beast. How perfectly she would fit into his family whose ideals and values would have them shunned from society if they lived them openly. Perhaps it was not God who sent her but Lucifer himself. For him to love, to cherish, to worship.

He is aware that he is getting ahead of himself.

Snowbell allows him to pet her but he eventually stands to place the rabbit back in her saviour’s hands. This time, her fingers brush against the bare skin of his palm. A shiver runs through him, tingling down his spine before settling warmly in his lower belly.

Her heated cheeks are evidence that she feels the same way.

“Do you enjoy reading, my girl?” he asks, only now noticing the book she must have placed on the instrument. A romance novel, he notes, not without a hint of disappointment. He could not be any more different from the heroes of such tales if he tried.

“I do, my lord.” She cradles Snowbell gently against her bosom, almost protectively, and he has to tear is his eyes away from the soft skin there. “I am an avid reader when I do find the time.”

“Please, feel free to use my personal library at your convenience. I am sure that you are in want of new reading material. This book appears to be… well-loved.”

“Are you quite certain, my lord? I would not want to impose–”

“Oh, nonsense. Many of the books have been collecting dust for way too long.”

Perhaps this suggestion stems from him wanting her to frequent his spaces and not those of his brother, if only to raise his chances of running into her. If Terzo offered her his instrument then he is sure that his eyes are not the only ones that she has caught. Secondo shares many a thing with his brother, but he will not share her.

“Thank you, my lord,” she says. “I am not sure what I have done to deserve your generosity but I shall cherish it forever.”

“Hm, your services are well-appreciated, my dove. I merely wish to make your life here a little more pleasant.”

She giggles. “His lordship must really like the lemon tarts.”

Her laughter shakes him to his very core. He is tempted to smile, or to tell her that it is not the tarts that have captivated him, but all this foolish impulse does is distort his stern features into a grimace. Before her eyes can linger on him, he departs with quick steps and a racing heart, making sure to leave the door open.

A few moments later the soft tunes of her music accompany him back to his study.

✦ ✧ ✦

The rustling of the page is a steady noise in the background as he works away at the desk he strategically positioned in his library. The expense reports of the estate are all in order and yet he goes over them once more – if only to stretch out the time in her presence. 

He looks up to find Snowbell happily munching on a carrot in her little crate on the floor. His true heart’s desire, however, is reading a romance novel that he so graciously stocked the library with. Not that anyone will ever see a report of this particular expense.

“Are the new books to your liking, my dove?” he finds himself asking.

“They are quite enjoyable, my lord.” She looks up, marking her page before she closes the book. “And yet… I find that I do not want a love like these books promise. It sounds rather boring to me.”

“How so?”

“The true appeal of a person lies in his or her imperfections, my lord. Not even the finest, most handsome young man could tempt me when there is no flaw in his character that captures my interest. If I should ever fall in love it should be with a man much older who has been shaped by the hardships of life, with rough edges but a core that still carries a soft heart that he only shows to those he holds dear. I should like to uncover this heart and have it beat only for me.”

Secondo pauses for a moment. Could it be true? Could a beautiful young woman like her truly fall for an old man such as himself? Accept that their love would be flawed and rejected by society and love him all the more for it? If it is true what she implies then does he dare hope–

“You are quite different from what I expected, my lord,” she says before his thoughts can carry him away. “I have heard many things that I now know to be untrue.”

“And how so?”

“Everyone told me that you were quiet and rather cold, polite but not in the habit of keeping anyone’s company and while generous with your staff they said it is rare to see you outside of your study. And yet… I have only ever sensed your warmth, your generosity, and while you are a private man I feel as though I got to know you merely by being in the same room and striking up idle conversation. You have requested my presence almost daily as of late and I must admit that I find great comfort in spending my time with you, so much so that I feel sad when a day goes by and I cannot see you.”

Secondo stands abruptly, overwhelmed by the sudden sparks of emotion that ignite the fire in a heart he has long since thought to be withered. His long legs carry him to where she is sitting on a plush settee, the golden sun from the window illuminating her like an angel incarnate. She is a dream he finds himself caught in, and not of his own volition.

“My dove,” he says as he kneels down in front of her, grasping her hand tightly in his. “Your companionship is the greatest gift that I have ever received.”

He presses a fervent kiss to her knuckles, quite overcome with his desires. How he longs to pull her into his embrace, to kiss her plump cheeks and soft lips, to keep her trapped against his chest and stroke her hair for hours.

When he meets her eyes, she seems surprised by his sudden outburst, but not at all repelled like he had feared. “My dear lord, how I wish we could have met under different circumstances.”

Secondo releases a shuddering breath and buries his face in her lap. When she begins to caress his head, running her soft fingers along the sharp lines of his cheekbones, he feels like he wants to weep.

✦ ✧ ✦

The delivery goes smoothly – until his brother appears in the doorway.

“A new instrument?” Terzo asks. “Whatever for? You could have asked to use mine, fratello.”

Secondo grumbles in reply, wishing his brother would finally leave. He is dressed smartly – a dark purple brocade waistcoat with a matching tailcoat, black breeches, a white cravat, high leather boots and a brand new top hat – ready to leave for a picnic or whatever social event he is planning to attend in pursuit of his latest sweetheart. He has always mirrored Secondo’s expensive taste in clothing but decided that his colour was purple instead of green. If it weren’t for Secondo’s lack of hair and Terzo’s thick black locks their brotherly relation would be uncanny, if not a little ridiculous.

“Do you not have to make an appearance somewhere else?” Secondo asks when his brother lingers while they set up the pianoforte under his watchful eyes. 

“Oh, I still have enough time to observe my brother’s folly. Tell me, did she bewitch you so that you are wasting the family’s funds now? How exactly do you plan on introducing the gardener’s daughter to polite society, fratello?”

A deep breath. Secondo cannot strangulate him in front of the suppliers. “I do not know what you are talking about. I merely wish to possess an instrument of my own.”

“Mhm and the ornate rabbits carved into the wood? Are those to your taste as well?”

“I am very fond of animals. I quite enjoy the design, do you not find it endearing?”

Terzo merely chuckles in reply, the words altogether unfamiliar from his bother’s tongue, and pats his shoulder with a heavy hand. “I will make sure that the pamphlets are filled with someone else’s transgressions, should you decide that a diversion of the ton’s attention is needed in light of your imminent marriage to a commoner.”

Secondo refuses to argue with him, Terzo is too smart for that. Instead he waits until they are alone again and his brother further inspects the pianoforte. The tunes he lures from the keys are splendid, much richer in sound than any he has heard before. A good investment, Secondo decides.

“What a splendid instrument,” his brother says. “I shall hope that your little rabbit plays it for you on many an occasion.”

“I plan to have her play it for me every day for as long as I live.”

Terzo raises a brow. “So you do intend to propose? My, my! I did not expect you to ever let go of your determination to stay alone for the rest of your days. What has changed?”

“I met the loveliest creature to walk this earthly plane, fratello, I have been touched by her angelic hands and saw the true meaning of paradise. I do not care much what polite society has to say about our union. I am quite ready to be selfish after I sacrificed my freedom for this family.”

“And politics, your favourite subject?”

“I do not plan to advertise this marriage, fratello. I shall be ready to face all the consequences, for her love will carry me through the worst of it.”

“Oh, how you have changed!” Terzo snickers but not unkindly. “I am very happy for you, brother mind. She will make a lovely wife for an old grump such as yourself.”

“You are just as old,” Secondo says dismissively. “And yet you act like a bachelor in the prime of his youth.”

“And I shall continue to do so for as long as I can. If you will excuse me now, I have a rendezvous to attend and I am already late.”

The moment Terzo departs, Secondo allows his own hands to explore the pianoforte. He is quite out of practice but the finely tuned instruments sounds wonderful even under his stiff fingers. An old song finds its way into his head and he allows his memory to do the rest of the work.

When he finally finishes, he is pulled from his trance by the loveliest of voices.

“My lord, you asked for me,” she says timidly as she approaches him. “I do not wish to interrupt when you play such lovely songs.”

“You are not interrupting, my dove. Please, come here, sit down in my stead. This is yours now.”

“Oh, but my lord–” She trails off, her pupils widening at the sight of the brand new instrument.

He is not certain what he did to upset her. “If you would rather play a harp or a lyre–”

“No, no, that is not what I mean, my lord. I just… I am not worthy of such an expensive gift.”

“Oh, but my dove, you are more than worthy. And it is not entirely selfless. I hope I will be hearing your sweet music more often while I am working in here.”

She smiles affectionately. “I shall play for his lordship whenever he wishes. I shall… I shall play until my fingers hurt!”

“I would never allow for this to happen,” he decides, reaching for her hands and massaging them gently in his. “No pain may befall my dearest for as long as I am here to prevent it.”

She holds his gaze, hope shimmering in her irises. “I shall play with caution then, I would not want my lord to be in distress on my behalf. Would you hold Snowbell for me, please?” 

Before she sits, she pulls the rabbit from the pocket of her dress where the she must have napped for she perks up sleepily when she is set down in his broad hands. Secondo does not make a move to stand.

“My lord–”

He uses his free hand to pull her into his lap and she gasps before her fingers find the keys. He can feel her shivering against his chest, her breathing as rapid as his heartbeat.

“I am not sure that I can play under his lordship’s scrutiny,” she whispers.

“I am quite certain that you can.”

With another shaky breath she begins to play. Heavenly tunes fill the room, her hands working their magic on the keys of the fine instrument. It is a song he has not heard before, slow and rather quiet but all the more powerful on his emotions. Her confidence soon returns and she plays in the same carefree way that he has grown to enjoy, only this time she is in his space, where she belongs. She is in his arms, breaths the very same air that flows through his lungs, and he can sense that made the right choice.

The moment her hands come to a stop, he places Snowbell back in her palms and turns her sideways over his lap. Flustered by the proximity she glances down to her hands, only to notice that the rabbit has a white ribbon loosely tied around her body.

“I will ask your father for your hand,” Secondo says bluntly and her eyes widen.

“My lord, that is… it is impossible.”

“It will be possible, if it is your wish as well.”

“But, I am just–”

He stops her, taking her chin between his fingers to force her eyes to meet his. “My dove, I need a clear answer.”

“Yes.”

Overcome with relief he closes the distance and devours her lips in a passionate kiss. She presses against him with the same fervour, though careful not to squash to rabbit in her hand. Her body feels heated underneath the thin fabric of her cheap dress and he vows to have the modiste come the very next day to take her measurements. His hands roam her curves without shame now while he ravishes her, kissing her with a passion that threatens to make his heart burst, unused as it is to such feral emotion. She tugs at his cravat then, and he relents, allowing them both to break away for air.

Her forehead falls against his, their noses brushing as their heavy breaths mingle in the space in between. Suddenly Snowbell squeals in her palm and when they both look down the rabbit leaps from her hand onto the keyboard. As the off-key notes penetrate the room, they both smile. Perhaps they have to hire a different musician for the wedding after all.

Thank you for reading! Hope you enjoyed – kudos, comments, rbs etc are as always much appreciated ♡

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[tasty-ribz]

The (very unsexy) Adventures of Secondo and Snowbell

aka four times Secondo was cockblocked by Snowbell and one time he wasn't 🙃

HAPPY BIRTHDAY @tasty-ribz!!!!!!

I hope you have the best day Ribzy because you deserve it! You are one of my favourite people in the whole world and you are going to accept being spoiled today because you are actually the sweetest and I feel so very lucky to be your friend 💜 I hope you don't mind me repurposing this art because it was what inspired this idea to begin with. So art, Snowbell and Secondo all belong to @tasty-ribz. If you would like to read the origins of Snowbell you can here and she features in Ribz' art here

NSFW | Papa Emeritus II x Reader | 4100 words

warnings: sexting, nudes, fingering, oral sex, pinv sex, orgasm denial(HAHA)

‘I miss you amore mio.’

‘I miss you too Papa.’

He drops his phone onto his chest with a huff. You were visiting your family for the holidays. It was only a week and yet he felt like he had lost an arm. This was not the first time you had spent a few days apart but usually it was him leaving the Abbey the two of you call home. He still missed you then of course but he was usually busy with endless duties and meetings and the time would pass in a blink of an eye until he was once again with you.

But this time, he was the one left at home and he missed you every moment of every day. He missed your kisses over breakfast, catching your smile across the Abbey as you go about your day, your warm body curled in his arms every night. And he was not the only one missing you terribly. At first, little Snowbell had decided it was his fault you had gone. It almost broke his heart the way she would perk up every time someone came to his office only to glare at him balefully when the person who entered was anyone but you. But within a day she seemed to be fearing he would disappear too, refusing to settle anywhere but his lap during the day and fussing about being returned to her cage in his office, until he gave up and brought her back to his rooms. Her tactic seemed to be to stay as close to him as physically possible so he could not leave her even going as far as trying to follow him to the bathroom.

He scratches at her fluffy head where she is curled up next to him on the sofa when his phone vibrates again. The chat with you is still open when he lifts it but as soon as he registers the photo he had just received it slips from his grasp and he has to fight the urge to cover Snowbell’s eyes. Instead he scoots her off the sofa, gently but firmly enough that she thumps with her back foot in annoyance before hopping away to the small bed you had set up for her in his bedroom.

Sure that she was far enough away he gingerly picks up the phone and indulges in the pulse of arousal your message inspires. He is hardening in his sweatpants embarrassingly quickly but he shoves that thought aside as he hurriedly shoves his pants down so he can give you his full attention. The picture is gorgeous, you spread out on a bed in his favourite barely there lingerie looking into the camera with a sultry expression.

‘Amore mio, you make me want to drop everything and run to you,’ he types one handed, not willing to relent his steady stroking. He watches the three dots at the bottom of the screen pulse, his anticipation growing. When your message final comes through he can’t suppress the groan as he takes in your second picture. It is a close up of your face pouting in the way that would have him unable to resist kissing you if you were in front of him.

‘What about you Papa? How much are you missing me?’ You type just underneath. While sending naughty photos is not exactly new to him it is new to your relationship, but he is nothing if not a gentleman. He is not going to leave his lady hanging especially with all the effort she has gone to. He opens the camera up and adjusts himself slightly for the best lighting, he wants you to be able to see exactly how worked up you have him. Maybe it will even encourage you home quicker.

Just as he is about to snap the picture all the air is forced out of him when a heavy weight suddenly lands on his stomach. Gasping for air he blinks at his phone and instead of seeing his erect cock on display he sees the unimpressed face of his rabbit staring back at him. Casting his phone aside he lets go of his dick like it were on fire, quickly pulling up his pants while Snowbell hops up his chest.

‘Well Coniglietto, you have certainly ruined the mood,’ he tells her with a sigh as she nibbles on his nose. His erection has well and truly flagged so when his phone buzzes again he knows he has to show you exactly what happened. Maybe the sight of your unimpressed fluffy child will work even better then a picture of his dick. Quickly, noticing your second message containing only question marks, he sends the photo. Snowbell is covering everything you may have wanted to see but it is more than obvious the activity he had been engaging in before his interruption.

‘I am afraid someone decided they missed you even more,’ he types underneath, hoping you will not be too disappointed but when his phone almost instantly buzzes with a video call request he knows it is fine.

‘Well hello…’ he starts before you cut him off.

‘Show me our baby girl please?’ He grumbles with pretend annoyance but switches the camera, relaxing as he listens to your happy cooing.

●○●○●○●○●

‘Sec…’ He manages to cut you off mid moan, capturing the sounds of your pleasure with a deep kiss so your hiding place would not be discovered. All day you had been on his mind, not that that wasn’t the case every day but today you had been especially distracting. You had risen early and while he had enjoyed sleepily watching you prepare for the day the call of a few hours more sleep had won out over ravishing you against your vanity. But those lustful thoughts had twisted their way into his dreams so when he had finally dragged himself out of bed a few hours later he had found himself burning with need while you were already hard at work. So when he chanced upon you in the corridor later that day, a day which had been filled with his heated imaginings, he couldn’t even wait long enough to take you back to his office. Not when there was a conveniently shadowy alcove just a few feet away.

You put up no fight, giggling sweetly as he manhandled you into the semi secluded space. His urgency must have been written all over his face as you asked no questions accepting his kisses with a pleasured sigh. To his ever present surprise you were as enamoured by him as he so obviously was by you, always able to break through his stoic exterior. You were so precious to him and he was overtaken with the need to show you. He wanted to make you cum on his fingers so with little preamble he sought out your core neglecting even to remove his gloves first. When his fingers don’t meet your warm wet heat he hastily pulled his hand free of your trousers, biting at the finger of his glove to free himself. He almost gets distracted by the traces of your taste against the leather but he spits them onto the floor quickly as soon as he realises he needs his mouth to swallow your beautiful sounds.

He teases at your clit, circling with the tips of his fingers until you are gasping into his mouth before sinking deeper but just as he is about to breach your entrance a terrified shout echoes through the corridor, coming from his office. You jump apart looking at each other in shock for a moment before rushing from your hiding place in time to see a white streak dashing down the corridor and around the corner followed by Terzo. He looks at you, blinking slowly in shock before you both take off running after them. Rounding the corner all he can see is Terzo bent double leaning against the wall.

‘Where is Snowbell? What did you do?’ He points at his brother accusingly. Terzo straightens up struggling to catch his breath and holds his hand up in front of him.

‘She bit me!’ He says indignantly, making Secondo scoff as you take his proffered hand in yours. He watches impatiently as you check his finger, finding the hole in his glove, the usually pristine white faintly dotted with red. The nip is barely visible, the glove taking most of the damage so Secondo can’t bring himself to care, much more concerned about the whereabouts of his rabbit.

‘You probably deserved it you stronzo! What were you doing?’ He has to fight off the urge to shake him when he doesn’t answer straight away.

‘I was waiting for you in your office,’ he begins to explain. ‘And you were taking forever.’ He gestures dramatically, unnecessarily elongating the word. ‘So I thought I would say hello to Snowbell but when I opened the cage she. Bit. ME!’ He waves his injured finger in Secondos face but he just bats it aside.

‘And then you must have scared her with all your shouting!’ He can’t help raising his voice as he gets more and more worried. They need to find her so he begins looking around the immediate area hoping she might just be hiding nearby.

‘Stop both of you,’ you say firmly, managing to keep calm despite the situation. ‘She has got out before, we know where she usually likes to go so let’s split up and check there first.’ He is so grateful for your level headedness. You are right, he knows that but he can’t help the panic starting to claw at him and he can see it in Terzo’s face as well underneath all the bluster. What if something happened to her?

‘Terzo could you check the window seats outside the library please? She likes to lay there in the sun so she may have gone there. I will check the kitchens in case she has gone looking for food. Secondo, you know how much she likes visiting Copia and his rats so you check his office.’ With only a nod you all go your separate ways. Your heart breaks a little sending him off by himself but you know that Copia will help calm him while you look. You hurry towards the kitchens, eyes darting from side to side checking every possible hiding place for a rabbit.

You reach the kitchen quickly with no sign of her but you sense you are on the right track when you find the little door to the kitchen garden open. Thankfully, between yourself and Primo you had made sure the walled vegetable garden had been entirely rabbit proofed so Snowbell would be safe on her usually supervised adventures outside. You search methodically through the raised beds, around the green houses, the dense herb garden and the small orchard but she is nowhere to be found. Your sense of calm is slipping away with every place she is not until you reach the ramshackle shed tucked away in the far corner. Princess’ Palace says the sign nailed to the slightly ajar door and you are almost certain you have found the runaway rabbit.

Princess is Terzo’s half feral cat. He had found her in this very shed almost twenty years ago as a small and very unwell kitten.and carefully nursed her back to health until she had been strong enough and old enough to look after herself. She preferred to roam the grounds avoiding most of the inhabitants of the abbey only tempted inside to lounge in front of the fire in Terzo’s quarters or chase some of the mice that also made the abbey their home. But since Snowbell’s arrival she had also been visiting Secondo’s office striking up an unexpected friendship between them.

You open the door slowly and breathe a sigh of relief when you see them. You pull out your phone trying to make no sudden movements that might disrupt them and take a photo to send to both Secondo and Terzo. Snowbell or the round ball of white fluff cuddled up with Princess you assume is Snowbell begins to shift, sensing your presence so after sending off the message you put your phone away and scoop her into your arms. You offer Princess a quick scratch to the head when she blinks open one bright green eye at you, probably annoyed you are taking away her nice warm napping mate. She stretches her legs before curling back in on herself and resuming her nap.

‘Come on now,’ you whisper against Snowbell’s soft head as you close the door to the shed and make your way back across the garden. ‘Let’s get you back to your Papa before he tries to kill your Uncle.’

●○●○●○●○●

Your mouth! He could never quite believe how good it felt when you took him in your mouth. It was obscene the way your lips stretched around him as you sunk down his length, taking as much of him as you could. He could watch you do this for hours, but not today. Currently you were under his desk, your lunch plans derailed when you realised how stressed he was. He had back to back meetings all day and he still had a mountain of paperwork to sort through but nothing would have stopped him from making time for your standing lunch date. You always brought him something directly from the kitchens when he didn’t have the time to leave his office and today has been no different. At least until you had sunk down to your knees in front of him and offered to help him relax before his busy afternoon.

It was an offer he couldn’t refuse considering the frankly embarrassing amount of times he had fantasised about you in exactly this position. He gently slides his fingers into your hair to support your head when he can’t resist shallowly thrusting into your mouth. You were so perfect for him, taking all of him so well. You gaze up at him with your eyes so full of care that he has to look away before the vision and the sensations overwhelmed him. And that was his big mistake.

He doesn’t focus at first, staring blankly across his office, still stuck on the vision of his lips around his cock but when you pull back to breath and lavish attention on the head he blinks back to the present and instantly locks eyes with Snowbell. The world narrows down for a second as he stares at her, feeling like the worst man in the world for getting a blowjob in front of his rabbit. Then you sink back down his length, taking him all the way to the base and he snaps out of it.

He tips his head back staring up at the ceiling as he tries to rationalise allowing you to continue. You are behind the desk so she can’t possibly see you and she is a rabbit! She has no idea what a blowjob is. And you feel so damn good. He drops his chin to his head allowing himself to look at you again but he still manages to catch sight of Snowbell sitting in her cage as he goes. His erection flags almost instantly despite your best efforts and you pull away looking up at him in concern and he has to bury his face in his hands.

‘Papa?’ Your voice is filled with worry. ‘Secondo what is the matter?’ He has to explain before you think there is actually something seriously wrong but he is suddenly overwhelmed with the absurdity of the situation he has found himself in. A laugh bubbles up in his chest that he doesn’t bother to repress as he tucks himself away and smoothes down his robes before taking your hands in his.

‘Amore, you are perfect as always,’ he starts trying his best to reassure you. ‘But, fool as I am, I looked away from you and found that our Coniglietto was watching.’ You peer over the desk behind you and see that she is in fact still watching and joins him in his mirth. Your soft giggles almost as much of a stress relief for him as your sweet mouth had been.

‘I do have another idea on how to relieve your stress Papa,’ you say as he helps you to your feet. You go to the cage, open it and scoop the inquisitive rabbit into your arms bringing her back with you. Instead of settling back in your seat though you continue around to his side of the desk but he only raises an eyebrow in question. ‘And much more bunny appropriate too.’ You seat yourself sideways in his lap, allowing Snowbell to snuggle between you. With a soft sigh you settle against his chest, stroking gently down Snowbell’s back and as he wraps his arms around you both he thinks you might be onto something.

●○●○●○●○●

At times like these he could easily be convinced the breathing was not actually a necessity. With the sounds of your pleasure ringing in his ears and the taste of you on his tongue who could argue that his need for oxygen was more important. That being said he greedily sucks in air when you ease up, looking down at him as you scratch your nails over his scalp. As soon as he has had his fill though he grips your hips firmly, encouraging you to continue riding his face. Your body jolts when your clit grinds against his nose just the way he knows you like and he moans as he laps at your juices as if it were the only thing that might quench his thirst.

Today wasn’t exactly anything special except for the fact that both of you were completely free. No meetings, no appointments and no obligations. Even Snowbell was spending the day with her Uncle Primo which meant he had you entirely to himself and he intended to make the most of it. He had risen early and made you breakfast in bed to begin your perfect day off right and as you were lying in bed together feeding each other fruits and pastries you had decided that neither of you would be leaving his rooms today. After getting up you had watched some telly, just basking in each other's presence until things had inevitably turned heated.

He can feel your body tensing as you near your peak when a series of loud bangs echo through his quarters causing you both to freeze. You start to pull away, moving to climb off of him but he stills you with his firm grip.

‘Amore, ignore it,’ he says between kissing and sucking at your sensitive inner thighs before you relent, eager for him to finish what he started. Just when you find your rhythm the bangs come again, the noise so jarring in the intimate relaxed atmosphere the two of you had built.

‘It must be important,’ you say reluctantly, pulling away once more but he will not relinquish you.

‘Nothing is more important to me than making you cum,’ he growls into your centre, proving his point with a broad lick from your entrance to your clit which he sucks on obscenely and you couldn’t possibly argue with his determination. At least until you hear even louder, BANG, BANG BANG!

‘Secondo if you do not open this door right NOW, I will be making rabbit stew for my dinner!’ You both scramble up from the sofa as soon as you realise it is Primo at the door, rushing to pull on clothes and make yourselves presentable in between exchanging worried glances. You had never heard him so angry before and you were nervous to find out what could have made him so mad. And what it had to do with Snowbell. You both pause at the door, sharing one last look before you swing it open to reveal a flustered looking primo holding a distinctly purple rabbit.

‘Primo,’ Secondo greets him with confusion taken aback by the scene before him. ‘We were not expecting you so soon,’ he hesitates. ‘And what have you done to Snowbell?’

‘Me?’ If steam could come out of his ears it is possible that would be what was happening right now as he looked at you both indignantly. ‘What have I done? Fratellino, the question you should be asking is what has she done?’ He holds her out to you a clear enough demand and she quickly snuggles into your chest when you take her blinking up at you with sad eyes.

‘She ate all my red cabbages!’ He fumes at his brother. ‘Not one is without a nibble!’

‘Oh Snowbell,’ you scold her gently, tapping her nose before stroking at her stained fur. ‘That’s not very nice.’

‘I will replace your cabbages Primo.’ He would like to point out to his brother that perhaps he shouldn’t have let a rabbit have free reign in his cabbage patch but he doubts the ensuing argument would be worth it but there is certainly one thing he must insist on. ‘But I think you owe Snowbell an apology.’ You look back and forth between the two brothers engaging in some kind of stubborn staring contest.

‘I … well, si.’ He turns to Snowbell and bows down to her level. ‘My apologies Snowbell. I would never put you in a stew coniglietto. But your Papa needs to teach you some manners if you want to come in my garden again,’ and with one last glare at Secondo he turns on his heel and storms away, presumably to salvage what he can from his cabbage patch.

‘I think we better go run someone a bath,’ You say as you both look down at the stained bunny blinking up at you innocently.

●○●○●○●○●

You flop back onto the bed before he has even had the chance to put down your bags and he takes a moment to watch you starfish on the luxurious sheets, his fondness for you warming his chest. In his mind at least, he had been planning this trip since you had agreed to be his. You both had arrived in Italy a few hours before, taking the scenic route to your hotel so he could begin to show you some of the sights. He was as excited to share his home town with you as he was to share everything else.

He was happy, more than he could ever remember being and it was almost entirely down to you, and of course Snowbell. As much as his favourite ball of fluff tests his patience he knows that without her he might have none of this. Following that train of thought makes his heart pang with guilt, having to leave her behind to have this holiday even if he knows she has been left in safe hands. Copia was the only person he had trusted to look after her for any length of time and he had already sent updates reassuring them that she was faring well in their absence. You must sense his train of thought because you gesture for him to lie beside you, shuffling over to make room.

‘Missing her already?’ You ask softly, wrapping your arm around his waist and pulling him closer.

‘It is silly, I know…’ he starts but she shushes him with a finger to his lips.

‘It isn’t silly at all.’ You replace your finger with a chaste kiss. ‘I miss her too. But that doesn’t make me any less happy to be here with you.’ You always say exactly the right thing to make him feel better. He chases your lips then eager to deepen your kisses. Any tiredness from your travels is replaced by the slow simmering heat of desire that he has only known since being with someone who understands him so well.

You undress each other slowly, no need to rush when you both feel like the only two people in the world. He needs to feel his skin against yours, your physical closeness matching how he feels about you right now. You roll on top of him, caging him in with your arms and as he enters you he pulls you impossibly closer until it feels like there isn’t even room for air between you. You rock together perfectly in sync, gasping into each other's mouths even as your kisses turn sloppy. He breaks from you for just a moment.

‘I love you amore,’ he whispers against your lips.

‘I love you too Secondo.’ Your smile was the most beautiful thing he had ever seen and he wished he could dedicate forever to making you this happy. He couldn’t guarantee forever, usually he couldn’t even guarantee an uninterrupted ten minutes, but he could have right now.

●○●○●○●○●

Love you Ribzy and a fancy british audio fic version will be recorded for you at some point in the future. I will even practice so I don't laugh through the smut this time 😁

[tasty-ribz]

Happy birthday, Ribz! Wish you lots of health and wealth (I really love you, your sense of humour and your art)

Thank you love <3 The way this pink collar suits him is just perfection 😌

[tasty-ribz]

Happy birthday Ribz!

I bring meme as a gift

Thank you 🥺 Omg this baby looks so fluffy