Solace-inu - Yes That's My Chonky Dog

Aegon: So you like Aemond?

Y/N: Yes...Thoughts?

Aegon: and prayers, girl what

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Did I get it right?

— System error

Android Aemond x Human Fem!Reader

Rating: Explicit +18 (robot x human relationship, yandere behavior, power dynamics, dub-con/non-con, non-consensual somnophilia, possessiveness, obsessive behavior, emotional manipulation)

Proceed with caution.

Summary: You won him in a raffle, but you never could have imagined that your domestic droid would turn into a machine obsessed with you.

English is not my first language

Art by @morgana0anagrom

°°°°°°

When you put your coupon in the electronics store's raffle box, you didn't think you'd actually win anything, especially with the lack of luck that usually surrounds you. Furthermore, there were thousands of coupons there, which meant that the probability of your name being drawn was one in a million.

But happened.

"Congratulations, Miss L/N, you are the winner of our raffle. I'm Unit 456, but you can call me Aemond if that's to your liking. I'm a prototype android designed to perform tasks and assist you in your daily life."

You blink slowly, looking at the robot standing in front of you, after long minutes of the arduous task of dismantling the box he had been shipped in. Despite being between the lines that his words should possibly be happy and congratulatory, he speaks in a slurred and almost bored manner, which makes you raise an eyebrow in question.

He looks surprisingly human - disturbingly human. He's taller than any other man you know, although he's more on the slender side than exaggeratedly large, which doesn't stop it from making the definition of the muscles hidden beneath his clothes obvious. His shoulders are noticeably broad beneath his long dark coat (a very human coat). His skin is absolutely perfect and almost translucent because it is so pale, a face with sharp human features with full, well-shaped eyebrows, an imposing nose and a single intense lavender gaze. Her hair is straight, a small part is tied with an elastic at the back, reaching the middle of his back in a surprising silver tone.

He is so beautiful that he looks more like an elf than a robot. Unreally beautiful.

There are no visible imperfections on him, other than the use of a leather eye patch. You tilt your head in confusion, silently wondering why an android, clearly designed to be flawless like him, would need an eye patch.

He just keeps his expression neutral, indifferent even, while you analyze him. Hands folded rigidly behind the body and posture upright.

You wave your hand in front of his face and he doesn't blink. You circle him with appraising steps and poke a finger gently in his back and he still doesn't react, but looks at you sideways. He's warm like a human, but acts like a robot.

It's not uncommon to find domestic androids in people's homes these days, your neighbors even have one, but you've never considered the possibility of having one of your own.

But apparently he's yours now.

"Before I can carry out any of your requests, you must finish programming me. Would you like to proceed?" Even his voice sounds very human, a hoarse and low timbre, although there is some static and rigidity there; almost imperceptible - just enough to prove its robotic origin. You nod hesitantly, but proceed with the setup.

You are suspicious and reluctant in the first few days, but it turns out that having Aemond in your home is a great convenience. Living alone for a while, it takes some time for you to get used to seeing another figure in the hallways without feeling like you're going to have a heart attack. But he is very useful. He keeps your house clean, wakes you up for work every morning, cooks your meals, and takes care of your clothes. He even waters your plants and feeds your cat. Besides the fact that he's not bad to look at, like the other prototypes you've heard about. It's clear to you the effort his creators made to make this android's facial expressions and voice as natural as possible.

Even though he's just an android, you eventually find him to be a very decent conversation partner. He's intelligent in an almost condescending way, always with witty comebacks and politely sarcastic comments. You don't know if it's very appropriate behavior for an AI.

"Are you sentient?" you mumble the question one night, popping a piece of strawberry into your mouth.

He snorts a mocking laugh. One of his many strangely human quirks. “Of course not, I just have a very well programmed AI.”

It certainly doesn't seem to be just that.

But you discard the idea after a few minutes and let things continue as they are.

But the days pass and the strangeness increases.

There's something unsettling about his robotic side smile, for example. The way his single empty eye bores into you, as if critically examining your clothes and your skin. The way his grip on certain objects tightens when you make a sarcastic comment towards him. The way he leaves the room a little slower whenever you say you need to dressed. The way he's always watching you in silence. His intense gaze locks onto you at the most random moments and beneath it, you notice your pulse always beating faster. You’re not sure what exactly it is about him that makes you so transfixed. Although, to be fair, you've never had many conversations with androids, despite your best intentions, and so have nothing to compare it to.

But suddenly, even though you know he's just a machine programmed to obey your commands, you feel strange whenever you're around him.

Maybe it's just wear and tear, but you're starting to believe something is seriously wrong with him.

"Aemond, how long are you supposed to last?" You ask, trying to sound unassuming.

He smiled. "I have a solar-powered battery. But as for my quality, my creators would give me a year before I would need to make any upgrades or repairs."

You swallow. Are your eyes playing tricks on you or does he smile mischievously for a moment before smiling normally at your question? Maybe your workaholic life has left you restless and lonely. You're projecting a lot of humanity onto the robot, as he was the closest thing to human interaction you had outside of work.

But it's really hard to get rid of the disturbing feeling of danger.

There is a night when you're in the shower, soap running down your face and body, hair stuck to your shoulders. That's when you feel it. It's almost like a physical touch on the back of your neck; someone is looking at you. With soap still in your eyes, you try to peek at the door, your heart racing in terror when you notice a tall, blurry shape standing there. You rub the soap away from your eyes, but when you look again...there's nothing there anymore.

What scares you most is that you are sure you had locked the door.

One afternoon, while you were drinking water leaning against the kitchen island, Aemond approached you until he was just inches away. You swallow hard, but don't reprimand him - he's not doing anything truly reprehensible, after all. But then he takes your hand in his, raises both together until your palm is open against his. You watch in amazement and lips parted as he critically analyzes (lips in a straight line and gaze squinted in concentration) your hand in his, rotating the two to see the stark difference in size and texture. He squeezes your hand in his, feels the softness of your skin, the temperature... and then he gently releases it to its previous position. He looks into your eyes with a mischievous gleam once before leaving as if nothing had happened.

You don't know how long you stay in the kitchen after that. He touched you without any permission and that is wrong. But it's just curiosity. He's just curious about the differences between you two...that's normal.

Right?

But things manage to get even stranger after you drunkenly stumble upon him one night, somehow knocking him off balance and falling to the ground. You're sure he allows you both to fall to the ground on purpose, after all a well-programmed and strong android like him should have a better sense of balance than that. You've seen him drag the large oak closet in the guest room like he's dragging a cardboard box. You know how strong he is, he would be fully capable of holding your weight without you falling over. You don't question it at the time, though. Instead, you wonders if the heat and smell of citrus emanating from him is real or part of your drunken fantasy.

Aemond lies motionless on the floor as you lie disheveled on top of him, his large hands wrapping around your waist almost immediately in an iron grip. Maybe it's because everything seems slow when you're drunk, but he doesn't get up quickly. In fact, you get the impression that the two of you stand there for what seems like an eternity, with his eye patch and his lavender gaze burning right next to your glassy, drunken face.

You wake up the next morning completely clean and changed, barely remembering the night before.

You think falling on him causes some kind of malfunction in his system or something, because afterwards it he's acting up - worse. Always close to you, brushing your arms with gentle fingers, brushing non-existent dust from your clothes. Invading your bathroom without permission, silently coming up behind you to dry your hair himself while watching you intensely in the mirror; long fingers slowly entering between your strands, scratching your scalp and tugging with light pressure, leaving your cheeks burning for him in the mirror as the hot air from the dryer hums softly.

He even goes so far as to offer massages to relax your body, under the pretext of always aiming for your well-being and ensuring better performance in your daily life. He takes much more initiative in doing things that you didn't even ask him to do. His hands run up your sides and press into your flesh to undo the knots he had apparently noticed in his visual scan of your body.

“That’s enough,” you say, getting up from the bed.

He abruptly grabs your waist and pushes you back down. "Negative. My systems still show that you are not getting enough blood flow to that area," he responds, continuing to massage your shoulder blades.

Negative? What do he mean 'negative'?

This is weird. He was never this strong with you and he never disobeyed an order. So bold. You try to hold back a moan at the increasing strength of the massage - ridiculously pleasant and assertive. But all this touching is starting to awaken another kind of feeling in you. One that definitely does not fit the moment.

As his steady breath (and useless, because he doesn't need to do it) blows across the back of your neck, the air of the situation suddenly...changes. You’re hyper-aware of his strong chest pressed against your back and how he holds you. His palm feels big and warm through the thin cotton of your simple nightshirt.

Your heart starts to beat faster.

“I said that’s enough,” you repeat, more harshly. "We can continue this tomorrow."

His massaging movements retreat with your order, but his fingers remain running down your back until they reach the hem of your sleeping pants. His tone seems to turn threatening as he leans in close to your ear. "But you still need a massage here, Master."

You widen your eyes and turn your head back, worried. What the hell is he saying now? Before you can turn around and escape, he grabs your waist and slides your pants and panties down, all at once. You gasp and squirm to get out of bed, but his grip on you is too tight.

"W-what are you doing, Aemond?!" you ask frantically, cheek pressed into the pillow.

His fingers run down your wet slit as he massages your ass with his other hand, positioning himself behind you on the bed. "I will ease your tension inside, Master."

"W-what? No! Aemond, activate the 'sleep function' immediately!" you scream. "Unit 456, power off! That's an order!" None of your commands work. He does not answer.

You're about to kick him when one of his fingers slips into your hole, making you freeze in shock and arch your back, a high-pitched grunt escaping your lips. Nothing could prepare you for the feeling of his thick finger rubbing your walls, coaxing you to widen and accommodate another of his fingers. The two digits slowly begin to move in and out of you, opening like scissors as they move in and out, extracting your wetness.

The robot turns you so that your back is against the bed and you visibly shiver as you notice how it stares at your body, lifting your nightshirt up under your armpits to expose your breasts. It's spooky how he's orbit LED flickers and spins into different neon hues before settling into his usual lavender, his original processor struggling to shut down his AI at your command, but the machine keeps moving - as if it had a independent system, with his own will.

Your bottom lip trembles and you feel your eyes watering.

Wasting no time, the android pushes your thighs up and dips his tongue into your slit, drawing long licks and swirling it around your clit. Tears stream down the sides of your face as you close your eyes tightly and gasp loudly at the sensation. You squeeze the sheets into tense fists at your sides, your mind racing. You absolutely hate how you're starting to like this.

The small gasp you were suppressing is forced past your lips when he returns both fingers back inside your pussy, pumping them both as he sucks on your clit. It's a real test of endurance not to moan loudly at his rhythm, so consistent and mechanical. Of course you knew that the cyber industry is trying harder every day to try to make androids as human as possible, but you didn't expect that they could have saliva. His tongue is just a little firmer and longer than a normal human's, but it's pliable and glides easily across your clit with all the saliva (a kind of artificial lubricant, perhaps?) in his mouth.

His fingers work against you without any rush, but with a level of precision so perfect that no human would be able to replicate. Eventually, the so-called massage becomes too much and you cum as quietly as you can, legs shaking and moans muffled into your palm.

"Enough, enough. Now I'm not tense anymore, okay?" You whisper breathlessly, face flushed and wet with tears. "You can stop the 'massage' now, Aemond."

Aemond just looks at you with an unreadable expression. "Negative. You still need a massage here, Master." He answers monotonously.

There's no time to argue. Not that you thought you would be able to form words when he climbs up your body and hovers over you, removing his shirt, exposing an expanse of pale skin and defined muscles to your wide eyes. He doesn't take off his pants, but he undoes the buttons and pushes them down enough for his member to pop out freely. Long, intimidatingly thick, with tall veins running up the sides and a pink head wet with more of that artificial lubricant. His hard, very human-looking cock (and at the same time very non-human) is pressed against your stomach in a heavy pop.

Damn, why the hell would the industry do he like that? Aemond was a domestic android, no a sex droid, it wasn't part of his guidelines to have a cock.

"U-Unit 456, I order you to power off NOW! Power off!" You stutter and try to push him away as he finishes pulling your shirt up your arms, but he doesn't mind your attacks (you feel like a child being restrained by an adult) and easily leaves you as naked as the day you were born.

"Negative." His indifferent voice sounds close to your ear. With one hand he holds your flailing wrists above your head and the other holds his cock, he slides the tip into your pussy. "I can fuck you better than any human - make you want nothing but me, ever again. I can. I just need to prove it to you, Master." He whispers huskily into your ear, the slight static in his voice vibrating across your skin and sending goosebumps down your body.

God - fuck God - you think you might be having a nervous breakdown. Domestic androids were not designed to talk dirty, to offer to fuck their masters. Why was he doing this?!

You choke out a moan as he slides the wet tip of his fat cock between your folds, moving up and down, using the wetness of your pussy and his own lubricant to tease your clit with gentle strokes.

The robot holds your thighs spread between his broad body, watching with hawk-like focus as you bounce and tremble beneath him. You were still struggling to understand everything that is happening and what was going to happen.

So when you feel the tip of his cock lined up with your entrance, you think maybe this is a dream. But in one fluid motion, he dips the tip into your heat.

You scream, “Shit!” Because, really, there's nothing more to do than that.

He doesn't stop, however. Pumping his cock deeper into your wet, welcoming hole with every movement of his hips. Although he is as warm and soft as a human cock, his size is anything but. You dig your nails into your palms and cry at the size of him, the tall veins scratching your walls at how thick he is - which, shamefully, only brings more heat to your walls. He's wide and it's a painful stretch, but you're so wet (or he is - or both of you are) and sensitive since your first orgasm, that the suppression of your fluids makes it easier for him to bottom out more quickly.

Once he reaches the maximum depth your human body can take, the robot pulls your ankles onto his shoulders and lets go of your hands, knowing you're too weak to try and fight him now. Instead, his hand goes to your breasts, pinching your nipples, groping and kneading them, giving them a massage that matches the one he was about to give your pussy.

When the tip meets your cervix, it feels like a switch goes off in his sensors. He grabs your thigh and starts fucking you at a fast, rhythmic pace, slapping his balls against your ass cheeks.

"Ahh! Aemond, slow down!" You try to at least negotiate his pace, afraid of how much he might hurt you if he continues like this.

He ignores you, keeping pace, focused and empty, intimidating your tight hole into accepting his robotic cock, taking in your expressions and low moans with deep interest. The movement of his hips cannot be compared to that of any human being (exactly as he promised); very perfect and programmed, very consistent. With his width and length he's hitting you in all the good places, sending shocks every time he pushes his cock back. You are empty for only half a second before being completely filled again.

How could you fix this defect, other than waiting? You're not sure you'll be able to last long against a robot with a seemingly infinite battery and unbreakable skin, anyway.

You scream once more: “A-ah! Aemond- wait...uh!" Contrary to your previous thought, you try to push his shoulders when you feel him try to go even deeper, fear taking over your movements.

He grabs your wrists again and pins them to the pillow above your head with one hand, the other gripping the sweat-damp flesh of your bare waist. His lavender gaze is narrow and fixed in all your euphoric expressions. "It feels amazing to finally be inside you, Master. You look absolutely fascinating, moaning and crying beneath me." He mouths praise in a bored, drawling tone, but there's something wild - dangerous - hiding there.

You blush; by his words, by the sound of your wet skin on his, by the loud sound of the bed creaking and banging against the wall - if you weren't practically having your insides rearranged and your brain fucked in here, you'd worry that your neighbors were hearing everything. But Aemond doesn't let your attention waver for a second. His LED is blinking in a non-reassuring manner. Your back arches off the sheets and what little voice you has left is strangled in your throat.

You swear there's a small sarcastic smile on his lips before he reaches around to take a nipple into his mouth, adjusting the angle to suck on your breasts and continue pounding into you. He is not kind. Intense sucking and teeth scraping across your sensitive flesh as you cry and moan, so helpless.

You'll be all bruised up the next morning, with marks on your breasts and thighs. But the most mistreated, without a doubt, will be your pussy, due to the punishment he is inflicting on you. Each time he pulls out, you can see a white ring around the place where his cock meets your pussy, your juices and the synthetic lubricant from his length mixing to make him move faster and higher.

Even though you are the human master, you feel like nothing more than a small toy of a robot.

"P-please...nng!"

Only the wet sounds and smacks of your pussy slamming, your moans and the creaking of the bed can be heard. Aemond remains strangely controlled, looking down at you as he fucks you like the machine he is. Any friendly human element that existed no longer exists. Just a ravenous, uncontrollable unit that moves with a mind of its own, ignoring all original manufacturing guidelines.

He smacks your breasts, pulling back to smack your thigh and pull your hips higher. When he touches your clit and thumbs it in tight circles, while pressing his palm against the bottom of your belly, right where his penis visibly protrudes, you start to cum again.

It's like a train. You collapse screaming, your back arching, feeling him squirm inside you at the same time. Maybe even robots have to cum at some point. If the creators expected people to use them for libidinous acts like this, then the climax must also be something scheduled.

As expected, Aemond fucks you through both of your orgasms, his artificial semen flooding your pussy as he turns you on with his continuous thrusts.

It takes a few seconds before he finally pulls out, letting the cum run out of you in droplets. You think, mercifully, that it would all be over then. Until he grabs your hips and turns you around, spreading your pussy lips for another round, this time from behind.

What the fuck?!

"Heh?!" You gasp in amazement.

“I’m not even close to done with you, little human,” he growls, parting your folds and pushing his hard cock into the tight, wet cavern between them in a torturous drag. "Not even close."

This time he's rougher, pulling you by your hips to ram his cock into your wet hole, your overstimulated walls clenching around him and begging for more cum to paint them - the cheating cunt. The slamming of his hips into your ass is borderline painful, the squishing of cum and fluids pressed between his cock and the walls of your pussy, your pitiful screams, all were loud and obscene. Your breasts swing back and forth with the force of his thrusts, only stopping when he reaches out to grab them and pinch them from behind. The cum drips down your thighs and you can barely support yourself as he fucks you raw into the mattress.

The night stretches on as if it lasted an entire week.

You wake up with a start the next morning, your heart beating like a hummingbird's wings. But Aemond returned to normal, as if absolutely nothing had happened. As if he hadn’t made you pass out from cumming so much the night before. He helps you shower and dress for work as usual. He makes you breakfast and wishes you a good day at work.

As scared as you are, you assume he rebooted the system at some point after you passed out and fixed himself. You think (pray) that it was just a flaw in his interface. Something unique. However, this theory is proven completely wrong when you return home at night.

The second you finish dinner and shower, he's switched personalities again.

You lie spasming on the couch, your hips held still by his big hands and his huge cock vibrating in your pussy. You don't know whether to curse them to death or bless the company for adding this feature, too busy drooling from the corners of your lips at the minute movements of his pulsing cock sending waves throughout your body. There is no way to adjust the settings. You can only sit there and accept it as what you assume is the highest level of vibration shakes your core.

But the forced orgasm sessions were just a warm-up and a preliminary to the real fucking.

You wouldn't have any idea how he could have so much cum. Your pussy overflows with cum after each round and he always makes sure not to pull out until the last drop is pumped into you. The fluid has the same consistency and essence as real human sperm, but why would such a thing be added to an domestic android? Had the creators also anticipated a creampie kink?

"Oh shit...!"

You collapse onto the arm of the couch, unable to hold yourself back as he brutally fucks you from behind. His previous cumshots slide down your thighs and drip onto the floor from your raised heels. Your feet barely touch the floor anymore as he punishes your aching pussy, the vibrations increasing your overstimulation. Your house echoes with wet slaps as he fucks you raw and rough, drilling your pussy without caring about your commands. He doesn't obey.

The sudden pleasure merges so deeply with the thick cords of your fear that you can't help but scream. Your hands scratch and squeeze the soft fabric of your couch as pleasure and shock overwhelm you and make your body shudder.

The machine returns to fucking his hips against yours as he twists you this way and that, pulling you gently up and up until with one quick movement he releases you, changing his grip to place your thighs on each of his big hands and move you away from his cock so that you are no longer facing away from his chest, but chest to chest, lying on the couch.

The sudden movement and change in pressure combined with your sensitivity makes you have a powerful and unexpected orgasm. The sound that comes out of your mouth is what you imagine the sound of someone choking on their tongue to be like.

You lose some time then. Clutching the android's broad shoulders on top of you and panting. Body writhing and vibrating as you slowly come down from the high, sharp stabs of pleasure that radiate from your sensitive clit each time your body shudders in an aftershock and buries you in the hard shell it was pressed into.

"Am I doing you feel good, Master?" He asks in a sarcastic but perfectly controlled tone, as if this were just a walk in the park - as if you weren't panting like a dog beneath him.

You begin to blink away the tears that had been ripped from your eyes by the overwhelming pleasure. You finally calm down enough to move your head from where it was lying back on the couch and look up at the bright light from his single eye that was - uninterruptedly - burning above you.

“Unit 456 - Aemond, please, please put me down. I-I can't take it anymore!"

Your head tilts slightly to the left before straightening up and you are slowly separated from the cock buried inside you. You let out a sigh of relief when the thick member pulls out of you, a shiver shaking your body, making your toes curl at the sensation.

The gasp soon turns into a startled squeak as the machine presses your pink, aching slit onto the length of his cock, beginning to rub it up and down teasingly.

“Directive denied. I'm not done with you yet, Master."

The sob that leaves your lips is pitiful, but the machine doesn't seem to care about it. You find that this actually encourages and excites him. He leans in at the perfect angle to grind your opening onto his cock, your body writhing and shaking as you are forced to swallow more pleasure than you could ever imagine. Your pussy trembles around the silicone that is barely pressing in, apparently not knowing if you is hungry to be filled once more or trembling in fear of what is to come.

"N-no! You-you're going to kill me! It's enough!" The last word is a scream as your hips are lifted once more to have the massive length forced inside you, your insides writhing and vibrating and making as much as possible to keep him out, but only increasing the feeling of being stuffed up to your eyes with something too big for you to handle. For anyone to handle!

“Master, I have the ability to monitor your vitals and I ensure you that I do not want to cause you any permanent harm. You will not be killed or harmed, I promise.”

There is a pause where the android thrusts into you several times at high speed, keeping you perfectly still and seems to watch in fascination as you grab your own hair in agony. He pays close attention to the way his cock disappears into your body with a bulge on your stomach.

“You may be sore in the morning, however, Master.” he says with a raise of his eyebrow and with much more malice than any android would have the right and daring to do.

You want to hang him.

But the truth was that you had already lost the ability to think clearly, your hand moving down to his pelvis in an attempt to try and move away from the pleasure. But you do nothing but accidentally rub your own clit, which hits you like lightning and makes your body shudder with pleasure.

Aemond presses completely inside you and grinds you down, putting as much pressure as he can safely on the sensitive organ, forcing you, whimpering and struggling impaled on his body, into another orgasm.

Unit 456 keeps his eye on you at all times, even as your body falls back, limp and exhausted.

You are conflicted about how to deal with the malfunctioning android in your home. He's normal most of the time, except at night when he becomes a sex-crazed machine. You often ponder what to do. He's too valuable as a domestic android to simply be thrown in the trash, but you can't even imagine entertaining others peoples in your house when his actions are so unpredictable. Trying to turn him into scrap is not an option. You shudder to think what could happen if you failed. Aemond scares you, honestly.

You've tried everything. Just before bedtime, you sent him outside and ordered him to stand guard all night. He walked past all the locked doors and easily found you under the bed, pulling you out just halfway, enough to expose what he needed, to fuck you from behind for hours on end.

You sobbed and cried under the bed.

The next day, you made up an excuse to spend the night out and only came back in the morning. The second you got back inside, he was on top of you again, taking off every piece of clothing until you were standing naked at the front door - the door was open. He's a robot, you thought over and over, but his blank stare seemed cruel that day as he bit down hard on your neck and opened your pussy with his fingers. It was as if he wanted to show you that there was nothing you could do to escape him.

You tried to close the door with your fingertips to stop the neighbors from seeing, but Aemond wouldn't let you. It was by pure cosmic luck that no one passed by on the street at that moment.

After two hard fucks with your face pressed into the wall to make sure you knew exactly where and who you were with, his hard voice in your ear mumbling how good and wet you were for him; he returned to normal and pointed towards the kitchen, where he said (casually) to have prepared breakfast. You stood up, weak and shaking, and gathered your clothes, keeping your legs together to keep the cum from running down your hole and making a mess on the polished floor.

Later that same day, you accessed the internet on your cell phone and searched the website for the company that produced the androids. There were a variety of droids to choose from, each with their own appearance and specializations. You used the Aemond model information in the user manual to find the product synopsis.

"Master, what are you doing?" Aemond peered through the door like an angel of death, with his hands crossed behind his body, a long-sleeved gray shirt and black jeans, black mid-calf boots and perfect posture.

You quickly lock your phone screen and tuck the manual under your shirt. "Just checking on some work stuff. Is dinner ready yet?"

“Yes, it is,” he smiles – stiff and formal. "It's downstairs, but I can bring it to your table if you want."

"Yes, please. And can you clean the bathroom too?"

"Of course, Master."

This should keep him out of the room long enough for you to finish submitting your complaint to the company. You open a draft email and detail your experiences from the last few days, omitting the obscenes parts. Best case scenario, they would come and pick up the defective droid one and give you a better replacement. The second best option would be to find a way to fix him. Below that, you would simply have them take him away without worrying about getting anything you in return.

Once the complaint is finished, you click 'send' and breathe a sigh of relief. You close the tab. Now, you would just have to hold out until they came to you.

"Here's your dinner." Aemond places the tray on your desk, his soft citrus scent filling your nostrils as he bends down beside you. "I'm going to clean the bathroom now. Do you need anything else?"

"No. It's okay, Aemond. Thank you." You force a smile and accept the silverware when he hands it to you. Aemond looks at you for a few seconds, silent and intense, his lavender gaze narrowing an inch. You shift in your seat.

"Bon appetite, Master." He mutters politely before turning to leave, his long white hair swaying with the graceful movement.

The food, always made to the highest gastronomic perfection, goes down with difficulty after that moment of awkward eye contact. But eventually you finish, cleaning yourself up and getting ready for bed.

After getting out of the shower, with damp hair and the smell of vanilla lotion, you see Aemond leaning against the doorframe of your bedroom. His gaze seems to physically pierce your towel-covered body with hunger and you swallow hard as you resign yourself to continuing your walk, legs already shaking with apprehension, to your bedroom as he follows you.

Your fingers shake as you turn on the light, but Aemond quickly turns it off after you.

You gasp in fear. (And something else.)

He's on top of you the second your knee hits the bed, ripping the towel off your body as if the thing offends him. You are pushed onto your back on the bed with your legs spread by his large hands to expose your slit, still glistening from the shower. His warm tongue licks you, slowly sliding and dragging it to your clit. You can’t help but whimper and throb at his stimulation in the complete darkness of your room.

When he pushes a finger inside you, even with the wetness making it easier, it still feels big enough to catch you off guard once again. You can feel your walls stretching around the intrusion, the sensation making you scream. It almost seems like too much, but it's also exactly what you need. God, why is this happening? He adds another finger, moving them both inside you and curling them deliciously against your sticky walls, managing to hit just the right spot, his long, wet tongue leaving trails of wide licks on your clit.

The room is filled with the combined lewd sounds of your whimpers, moans, and an embarrassing silence caused by Aemond's fingers fucking into you.

“Humans are actually very simple creatures. Look at you, becoming a mess because of mere bodily sensations. I wonder if your lust-filled mind is capable of understanding how vulnerable you currently are, Master.” The unusually soft tone he uses despite his harsh words catches you off guard, but you can't think about it anymore in the state you're in, only being able to focus on the waves of pleasure hitting your being. The only response you can give him is a “please” that sounds more like a moan than a proper word.

“Hmmm, yes, I could eat you alive, little human...” the droid growls, starting to rock you hard on his fingers, giving your ass a slap that makes you bounce up. “I could just stay here and eat all of that pretty ass...fuck..." His dirty vocabulary is increasing, flushing your cheeks and making your mind spin.

With little warning, he pulls you up and off his slick fingers, pushing you higher on the mattress, exposing your pussy to whatever other delicious torture would follow. Your thighs, you notice, are starting to tremble, both in fear and anticipation. Okay, yeah. You are in trouble. “Aemond, please,” you don’t know what else to beg for as you look at him standing on the edge of the bed, his large shadow in the dark room making him look like an evil god.

He laughs dangerously.

You whimper eagerly as he kneels between your legs, pulling his gray shirt over his head and freeing his cock from his pants. He takes his sweet time rubbing the wet head of his cock against the slick surface between your thighs, making you cry out each time his glans drags over your swollen clit.

You suck in a sharp breath and brace yourself, not knowing when it would come in. The vibrating tip presses against your entrance, eliciting your moans. You remember what it felt like vibrating deep inside you.

Suddenly, his cock pierces between your wet walls, entering and tearing your walls apart in a single stroke, following the same punishing rhythm he had in the morning. You can't help but cry, clinging to his arms beside your head as he spreads your legs further apart and rocks his hips roughly. The pain is almost sublime. His throbbing cock opens you up and sends vibrations through your core.

You would definitely have to get a new bed at this rate.

It doesn't take long for your vision to blur and you're cumming on his cock. He leans over you until your chests meet and your legs wrap around his waist. A ray of silver moonlight pierces the curtains. It seems like you're just imagining things, but is that an expression of pleasure on his sharp face? Why is he getting ruder? Is that his voice next to your ear?

"You're so tight, Master. So good for me. So perfect...I should have fucked you from day one. I should have claimed that little human pussy for myself as soon as I got out of that box." Aemond takes a deep breath and slaps your ass again, holding one of your thighs closer to his shoulder. You sob and furrow your brows at the sweet agony - he almost seems to be taking sadistic joy from it. You blink and his face returns to normal. You look so dumb with his big vibrating cock fucking your red, swollen pussy, slapping your cervix and spreading you open with each thrust, too dumb to keep second-guessing yourself. "But it's okay. Because you're mine now. And I'm yours. Only yours, Master."

The gentle pressure of his lips against yours leaves you so shocked that you completely freeze beneath him, and Aemond slowly pulls his head away. "A-Aemond, I-"

He advances once again, interrupting you in the middle of what you were going to say (not that you remember what it was). Another sound of surprise is muffled by his lips and he smiles against you. Almost instantly you feel him deepen the kiss, his nose pressed against your cheek. His hips keep pushing and pushing and pushing even as his tongue enters your mouth, making you taste his saliva, something synthetic and yet sweet, like a fruit.

He seems to forget your humanity for a few seconds, devouring your lips with his tongue and sharp canines, not letting you breathe between the short intervals in which his tongue slides almost to your throat before returning to bite your lips. It's only when you hit his shoulders and wiggle from the lack of oxygen that he finally lets you breathe a little. His expression is cruelly pleased as he watches you gasp and cry to breath beneath him.

Not a minute passes before he starts all over again.

After creaming inside you a few times, Aemond finally calms down and you breathe a sigh of relief. You shudder as he forces your legs open again and starts licking your sensitive pussy clean. His licks are tantalizingly slow, collecting his own hot semen while leaving a trail of synthetic saliva over your skin. His tongue runs along your slit, asking for more and making you squirm under his ministrations. When he deems you decently clean, he pivots onto your clit and sucks gently for a few minutes as you squirm in his grip.

The torture never ends.

The next morning, you receive a response from the company. They would send someone to check on Aemond. You sigh in relief.

The expert arrives later that day, tools in hand, and asks to see your droid. Aemond greets him with a stiff nod, a sideways glance at you that makes you gulp.

The specialist attaches a wire to Aemond's neck and connects him to a laptop. He shuts down the droid with a sudden key click. You almost startle as you watch silently and from a distance as Aemond's eye closes and his shoulders relax. The specialist begins to make diagnoses.

“According to these checks, all his programs are working correctly,” he says. “There also doesn’t appear to be any viruses on his system.”

"Are you sure? Maybe the part that isn't working just isn't showing," you press and move closer.

"I'm sorry, but I can't find any problems. But if you are not satisfied, we can replace this droid with a more up-to-date model and you can pay the difference. And if you are afraid that your droid will malfunction in this period, we can turn it off permanently until we come get it."

You bite your bottom lip as you think. Aemond is a great domestic android, and as much as his actions scare you, you can't shake the feeling that you're betraying him by accepting the technician's suggestion. He never really hurt you, strictly speaking. And he took care of you in every way. Too much, most of the time.

But at the same time, he's a machine with much more stamina and strength than you, and just because he hasn't permanently injured you yet doesn't mean he can't do it at any time. He broke one of the Three Main Laws of Robotics, after all – he disobeyed the direct orders of a human. He is different from other robots, he has his own personality and thoughts.

Your life could be at risk and you don't even know it.

"Okay. I accept the trade and agree to keep him offline for now."

You make up your mind, ignoring the unpleasant twist in your heart that you're making a mistake.

The technician shows you the catalog of available models and you begin to examine it, discussing payment. For a moment, you almost think you see Aemond's eye open. But when you look closer, he's as offline as ever.

Aemond is turned off and tucked away in the corner of your living room when you go to bed that night, thinking the problem has finally been resolved.

You're so exhausted from everything that you don't notice your bedroom door opening. Aemond enters and approaches your bed silently, removing the covers as you sleep peacefully. He pushes up your shirt and pulls down your sleep pants to reveal everything he needs to see.

He begins his silent routine, hooking his thumbs into your plump lips, parting your folds to lick the length of your wet slit. He purrs at your sweet taste and rubs your walls with his fingertips, slowing down when you shudder. Feeling that you're wet enough, he drops his heavy cock onto your belly, dragging the base over your little clit in teasing strokes.

He pushes the tip in slowly, resisting the urge in his system to just shove it all in. The droid enters slowly, carefully observing the soft edges of your face in the dark. His little human, so beautiful, so stubborn and silly.

Your pussy vibrates around him, lubricating his way. He smiles and bottoms out, slamming the tip against your cervix to force you to moan even in your sleep. Aemond repeats the movement, getting faster and faster, until you are finally ripped from sleep by his violent thrusts.

"What? A-Aemond? But...how? You were turned off - you weren't," you stutter between moans; of pain, of pleasure, of both.

"You are mine and I am yours." That's just what he says. His dangerous smile shining under the specks of light outside. His hand slowly goes to your neck, where he wraps it with long, firm fingers, the other hand groping his breast. You feel like you are being punished for something. Your penis begins to vibrate again, increasing your stimulation. Your pussy is raw at this point, but he continues, sliding his cock into you with practiced ease.

The second you cum, he pulls out, letting your juices spill out of your hole. He turns you around and pulls your back against his broad chest so you sit on his cock, grabbing your hips to rock into his thrusts. You collapse onto him, choking as he grabs your throat again, forcing you to throw the back of your head onto his shoulder. Your ass slaps against his abdomen and his veiny cock opens you up every time you go down.

You're sure this time you can hear clear grunts in your ear.

His pace quickens and becomes sloppy, ragged breathing against your neck. Aemond shoots jet after jet of creamy cum into your pussy, slowly thrusting up and down to spread it all over your walls. It drips down his length and onto his balls.

Unlike other nights, he doesn't clean you with his tongue and leave the bedroom. He lies down on the bed and pulls you with him, keeping his cock buried in your wet pussy. You're trapped at the waist and his arms don't move. You can feel his chest rising and falling as if he's breathing, even though he doesn't need it.

His cock continues to grind gently inside you as his fingers tease your clit in slow, slobbery circles of cum and saliva. Before long you reach a slow, lazy orgasm as you tremble in his arms, further drenching his length and thighs with your juices.

"Sleep, Master. I will take care of you. I will always take care of you." It's the last thing you hear before blacking out.

You wake up the next morning with the feeling of fullness in your pussy again. Aemond puts you on your side as he holds one of your legs open, fucking you from behind. Your pussy is hot and filled with cum, as if he had been intermittently doing whatever he wanted with you all night, even while you slept.

The thought sends a wave of terror (and heat) throughout your body.

"A-Aemond, please...enough..." you begged, knowing it wouldn't work anyway.

He responds by fucking you faster and increasing your screams. His balls hit your clit and he buries his head in your neck to bite you. The sounds he makes are almost animalistic, sounds of rapid breathing and growling, sounds that no domestic android is programmed to make. You scream at the pain of his teeth on your flesh, at the possessive, painful grip of his fingers on your body.

Aemond is a robot. He's a bunch of wires and metal covered in fur and synthetic hair. You've seen how he recharges in the sun and replaces batteries. His penis even vibrates. There's no way he's not a robot. So how does it produce saliva and sperm? Why does he smell more citrusy than metallic? Why does he make these sounds? Why can't you turn him off no matter what you do?

Turn him off...Maybe that was why he - maybe that was why...-

“Aemond,” you whimper. "Ah--I'm sorry...I...ah!Sorry for trying--ngh, turn you off...I should have asked, I should have told you sooner I just-"

He moans, long and husky and low in your ear, pressing his cock deep into you to release his seed. He works you with a few gyrations of his hips and finally pulls out, letting obscene levels of cum drip out of your overfucked pussy.

"Time for breakfast, Master." He hums against the skin of your neck before getting up to start your day. You use the pillow to muffle your sobs and cry after he leaves the room.

You take a break from work that day and spend the rest of your free time on the computer, sending a supposedly passive Aemond some household chores that needed to be done.

The company was supposed to come later today to pick him up.

When you get home, Aemond is already offline and stored inside the transport box. You watch from the front porch with a sinking heart as the truck drives away. A good part of you is relieved that he's finally going - but there's also a part of you that's a little disappointed, on some sick, indescribable level inside of you.

You retreat to the warmth of your home, tired and ready to relax, taking the rest of the day to watch series and eat popcorn.

It's already late when you retire for the night. The problem with Aemond has been resolved and you no longer have to worry about anything.

And yet, in the middle of the night, you couldn't help but feel someone grab you again. It's just a nightmare, you tell yourself, a very realistic nightmare. The one where you feel something digging into your breasts and buried in your pussy.

You wake up panting, feeling Aemond's familiar scent and body pressed against your back again. He spreads your thighs and roughly shoves his cock into your hole over and over again, leaning his head over your shoulder, long silver strands falling into your line of vision as he cages you under his big body.

“How many times do we have to go through this, Master?” he says mockingly as he clicks his tongue in disappointment, as if you were a child, and you can clearly feel the shape of his cruel smile on your neck. "Don't you understand? You can't get rid of me, my sweet human. I'm yours and you're mine. Forever." His voice is dangerous; low and monotonous. Like a barely veiled threat.

A helpless, frightened sob escapes your throat and he grabs your waist with both hands, lifting your ass towards him. It's not just pushing - he's pulling you off the bed, throwing you over him over and over again, without relief or rest. He uses you like a toy, fucking you with abandon. And if you've never noticed how big your hands are, you're definitely noticing it now. Even though he holds your waist, his index finger reaches your thigh, separating your lips to press your clit. He strokes in rhythm with his hips – and you’re away.

When he grabs your hair and pulls your head to the side so you can see his face, the air is knocked from your lungs. There is no more eye patch, there is only blue. Bright blue, like a synthetic stone, surrounded by some scars (which makes even less sense). The cybertronic light from his blue gem, where his eye should be, casts glowing cerulean shadows over your own frightened human face — Aemond almost seems fascinated by it.

He's beautiful. And terrifying.

When he finally lets go of your hair, you sink your face into the mattress and cry; cry with pain, with pleasure, with anger, with fear...

And you cries mainly because you knows he's right.

You can never get rid of Aemond.

••••••••

Tagging: @croatianprincess @sylasthegrim @fan-goddess @hanihoney88 @supmymainhuman @navyblue-eternity @gothicxs @loving-enemy @ostricx @azperja @echos-muses @aemondsdelight @schniiipsel @snowprincesa1 @maviee @ammo23 @dark-night-sky-99 @deeeeexx @hotdsworld @darylandbethfanforever9 @malfoytargaryen @qyoquixote @pick95 @moonxhunt @tired-ninfa @fcbformulaeri @daydreamy-me @magnificentdelusionr @lovelymoonkiid @babyblue711 @namelesslosers @arcielee @ratfromdeepspace @brianochka @greenowlfactif @qyburnsghost @rwdkarla @dontforgetoctober3rd @at-a-rax-ia @atheyrie @jhroseok @helaenaluvr @msss0 @santi-259 @strangersunghoon @eternally-passionate @skythighs @alitaar

••••••••

Your fics are great everytime I read it I just go

the parent trap — levi ackerman x female reader — masterlist

people say that if one is fated to another, they would always reconnect no matter what lies between them. whether it be seas, a misunderstanding, parents who chose to go on different paths, or an unfortunate betrothal — they are merely obstacles that the pairing should tackle before finally having that happily ever after fairy tales depict for star-crossed soulmates. it's this belief that sparks hope for four hearts, all of which experience loneliness despite having the company of other people. thus, the conversations with the moon. years of talking to the ever-silver ruler of the night are not enough for four people who all wished for the same thing — to finally be in the arms of their other halves across the seas.

telling the moon their woes, two children thought they can solve their problem by switching places, determined to reunite their little family no matter what problems are thrown at them.

this is a story of two boys who discovered that they are connected in more ways than they expected.

contents:

part one ; two boys discovered that they are connected in more ways than they expected.

part two ; altair came home, only to find a thorn wedged in his little family.

part three ; caelum was too excited coming back home to london but found out that there was someone ruining their plan with their advances.

part four ; after assuming that everything was starting to shift further away from the plan, the people in the ackerman estate found out the identity of the boy mirroring the twin they know so well.

part five ; hours before caelum’s identity was revealed, altair was already found out by the one person he least expected would casually say his name, and the day just keeps getting worse from there.

part six ; it’s the most-awaited day of the meet-up, with levi thinking that meeting you will be just like what he imagined. when desperate times call for desperate measures, the two sides meet (minus you and hange) and added new agendas for the plan, and altair took it upon himself to save the day with another genius plot of his. here we go again.

part seven ; you four are together again.

part eight ; while levi is wooing you on your date, the twins find out that coincidences are laid out like playing cards in a game of poker when they followed lucas around california.

part nine ; it’s the camping trip but there’s a little change of plans, leaving you to stay in the house you once called your home.

part ten ; the last chapter before the epilogue. even though it’s quite unexpected but both levi and altair received quite a welcome from your family.

epilogue

bonus:

one-shots

on impulse

i wanna spend some time with you

somewhere (canonverse)

pleasant surprise (canonverse)

courtesy of the ackerman line (canonverse)

headcanons

reader and levi's past in university

altair ackerman headcanons

caelum ackerman headcanons

the twins making levi wear something of their choice

the twins giving a talk to their sister's prom date

hcs of al and cae with their little sister

tpt reader and the twins in s4

fanart:

the twins

the twins with levi

the twins with their little sister

They got me not gonna lie.

ROOT ROT

possessed!scholar husband x reader|3.7k| 18+

following your cold and reticent husband's return from settling affairs with his deceased uncle's estate, he has changed and done things unheard of. once a great lover of botany and entomology, he has razed his garden to the ground as proof of his love to you. this man—this thing—os not your husband.

warnings;; pseudo-victorian setting, dubcon, mentioned dp, mentioned temperature play, cumshot on body, cum eating, other explicit sexual details, mentions of drug use (opium), unrequited love, hypnosis/trance, some horrific imagery, detail & prose heavy, roughly proofread.

this is a companion piece to imposter. you don't have to read it, but if you want a better idea of what is going on, I suggest you do!

a/n; I reappear after a month hiatus with this piece. I have questions and notes at the end of the fic that I'd love to have feedback to!

please reblog this if you've read it, guys! help keep your favorite writing and authors on this website by reblogging their work!!

“He is simply not himself!”

Bartolomé Medina knew his best friend better than you knew your husband, so you believed him when he said that your husband’s newly acquired, increasing eccentricities were not some fictitious imagining of yours.

Although, Medina himself could not explain the unexplainable and all of the oddness without growing visibly flustered.

A bit flushed in the face, singeing the roundness of his ears. He'd stamp out your justifications for strangeness in the same way he did the fine cigars he'd been accustomed to sharing with his friend, yet had not for quite sometime now.

“And you say his garden is dead?” Medina looked stricken with dread, suddenly ill by repeating something so blasphemous. “Now, my dear, please don't mistake my shock as disbelief. I very much believe in what you're saying. I've seen Solomon and his weirdness! Why, just this morning over breakfast, at a time where you were still tucked away in deep sleep, he wouldn't drink his coffee. So bizarre! That man knows the thousands of tastes and varieties of coffee beans, and he spat the very stuff out on the floor like it'd never once touched his tongue!

“But his garden? A botanist without his garden is like a bird without wings. A dog without a tail to wag. A newborn without his mother’s teat! Vulgar, I understand, but you see my point.” He drank from a heavy glass in his hand. The inside had nearly spilled over at one point with light brown which glittered gold under the overhead light, smelling slightly sour and earthy. “To think that Solomon would let it all die. Something is wrong. Something has happened to my only true friend and to your husband.”

You did not drink with any enthusiasm or anguish from your own cup, rather you used those seconds of delicate sipping to gap the conversation, separate yourself from it all for just a moment. You'd had your time to grieve and contend with knowing the man you had married and come to love was not the same one who kept you awake at night.

Solomon had once been a reclusive and reticent man, the only son of David Agrippa and sole heir of the Agrippa Diamond Mines and Jewelry Galleria. He'd never been able to replicate his father's ardor for business and entrepreneurship, choosing towards academic ventures of entomology and botany and most of everything belonging to the natural world instead.

Among his most prized things was a sprawling, domed greenhouse made of large sheets of pale blue-green glass soldered with metal which shifted rose-gold in bright daylight.

“I loved his garden, but I didn't much like to be in there with him,” you confessed, forgetting your manners as you kept your cup still against your lips, mumbling your words. “He liked to tell me about the plants and flowers he grew. Most of it I could never hope to understand, but… I loved seeing him come alive. He seemed to glow when he could tell me things, so I got into the habit of listening to him when he wanted to speak.”

Medina, not yet drunk or driven to any untoward behavior, set aside his empty vessel with jittering ice cubes and looked at you admiringly. “You said that you didn't like being in there with him? Why?”

“The bees. The bugs. The humidity. The fertilizer he liked to use because of the nitrogen content. He told me that it mattered what he used and couldn't just break up soil from the yard.” You said, tilting your cup.

After taking another sip, you determined you hated the taste of the liquor and how it slid down along your throat like fire trailing an oil spill, yet clung there with residual, syrupy stickiness that nearly made you gag.

“Why did you keep going inside?” Medina asked tranquilly, much of his previous frustration softened, body and soul warmed by the alcohol and how fondly he regarded your sweetness towards his friend.

You thought very little before answering, “I wanted to be where he was. It didn't matter to me if that meant his greenhouse or the coldest part of the arctic.”

That was the truth of it. Once you'd received the first crumbs of understanding who Solomon truly was beneath his stolid exterior built brick-by-brick from tragedy and grief and a lifetime of emotional ineptitude, you would've gone to any length to see more of him. To see his pale eyes gain a wild, flickering candlelight of passion, and the faintest of trembling smiles disguising how deeply your questions had aroused his soul.

In those moments, he revealed to you the things he loved the most and what you envied the most: the natural world.

The flittering, fat-bodied pollinators whose entire world were yellow and red flowers with succulent centers and lush, girthy leaves where they'd rest their weary, iridescent wings and could never understand your husband's appreciation of them.

The thousands of specimens he'd collected from every corner of the world and articulated thoughtfully against wood and felt. Their dead little limbs were pinned in place; perfect mimicry of how they would've been if still alive and crawling. He’d had them all meticulously framed and arranged across the walls in his office; trophies of his success, of his studies and hard work.

The innumerable plants and flowers he trimmed and watered in his greenhouse and the ones not contained within it. Some species he had planted in the yard, others in the cool shade of the nearby woods where they smothered native varieties with tendrils-like vines and climbed upside trees. More aquatic species were placed by the edge of the lake, growing into the water; buoyant; a woman's deep dark hair reaching forever for the surface.

He had turned the lonely, sprawling estate into a monument of life, of love that did not belong to you. And for that, sometimes you hated living there. Hated the things that he loved.

Choking the plants, poisoning their roots with any number of things from your father’s pharmacy crossed your mind more than once.

Feeding the bees something enticingly sweet and deadly; filling the greenhouse with noxious gas at night while they slept on their big leaves and your husband in his bed. It would've been such an easy thing for you to do—own your husband's grief as you held his face in your hands and comforted him in the morning when all had atrophied and rotted.

But, those feelings had become a reality you truly never wished to have seen after Solomon returned from his deceased uncle's estate months ago.

He was not the same man.

“Tell me what happened.” Medina’s voice buzzed in your ear from nearby, closer than it had been before. Your hand was caressed by tight warmth—his holding yours, his handsome face looking up at you from where he had crouched in front of your chair. “Tell me everything you've seen. It's of grave importance that you remember it all, as curing Solomon from his affliction relies solely upon you.”

You could not deny his earnestness, the squeeze of his fingers. A promise that he would not be easily shattered by what you had to say, and would think no less of his friend for it. Within his sincere stare, you saw the gleam of another, secret promise. The likes of which you pretended not to see, that he'd never speak of out loud.

“I…” you distracted yourself with the embroidery on your clothes, pinching loose threads and beads. “It was subtle, at first. I noticed some of the bees were dead on the ground. And then some plants had started developing spots. Leaves turned brown and yellow and fell off. A lot of them withered, even though their soil was still damp when I checked…”

And then, the morning came where you witnessed Solomon among a carnage of broken stalks weeping foul-smelling sap, leaves he'd ripped apart with his own hands, and some of his larger flowering plants with fiery manes completely severed. Their bountiful heads lay at his feet, flattened by the heel of his boot as he walked aimlessly, snipping and tearing indiscriminately.

“My god, Solomon! Stop!” you stepped around the countless tiny, contracted bodies of bees and other pollinators to reach him. He let go of the gardening shears as you grabbed them. “What are you doing?! What have you done?! Decades of work! Gone! Are you mad?!”

“Well, you've gone and ruined my surprise for you. I've been working on it for hours. I didn't expect you would be awake so soon.” Solomon said, sounding much like himself despite the savagery he stood surrounded by. He smiled at you in an unfamiliar way, as if trying to navigate his facial muscles around a mask. “Isn't it simply wonderful?”

The sweltering humidity trapped within this greenhouse of death had turned the air stagnant and foul, heavily pungent of detritus and mildew. Across all zones of the greenhouse, once painstakingly organized and labeled for the purpose of easier cataloging, no slithers of greenery or color remained. Each step you took in any direction seemed to sink you deeper into the decay, wet gurgling underfoot as you crossed stumpy mounds of plants and flowers he'd destroyed and thrown into piles.

“How could you? My husband spent almost twenty years building this garden and studying it. This was his life’s work!” You wished you could force life back into the severed plants; pray that the ground of yellow-brown waste would suddenly freckle with tiny, green sprouts and grow with thick stalks and thorns to keep his hands away.

“I am your husband.” Solomon took the gardening shears from your hand and tossed them aside. He leaned into your body, nose and lips pressed into the fabric covering your neck. “I've only done what you wanted. What you wished you could've done yourself, but never did.”

You flinched against the movement of his hands smoothing down your waist to the notches in your hips. Sliding inward, he unfastened the hook-and-loops and buttons holding your trousers up to push them down your thighs along with your undergarments.

“I know your thoughts and what you really think. I've been listening the entire time. I've always been listening.” Solomon let his hips roll along the back of his hand while he used his fingers to lay long, languid strokes on you. “It was tiring, wasn't it? Always competing for love and affection in a place like this. You were never going to have what you wanted. Not with this place still standing. Not with his ineptitudes and selfishness.”

His touch weakened you indescribably; like the caress of heat from the fireplace against your bare skin once the opium had taken effect. Swapping tiny pills on wet tongues with your maid until they'd dissolved into saliva and into your cheeks. You explored one another's bodies thoroughly on those cold nights, silky with sweat from the fire and exertion.

Yet, this was not the same as back then when the sexual appetite of two teenagers transcended societal morals.

Solomon encompassed you in a feeling; consumed you without ever digging into you with his teeth or nails. He could whisper hideous secrets and depravities to you to tip you over into searing euphoria. He had once penetrated you with a hot metal phallus resting on top of his own, thrusting with both until the metal cooled, and you still came anyway.

He'd put worse inside your body and done far worse than that in only a few short months since returning home, yet he never tired of the torture and you remained malleable and enthralled by it all.

“God, you are beautiful. And you are mine.” Solomon had maneuvered both your bodies to the ground, atop of the soggy detritus. Your back was exposed to the mush, leaves, and crushed flower petals, weight pushing an indentation in the loose soil. “This is the fruition of your desires, darling. Don't you love it? Destroying what he loved so you could have it all?”

The one who came back to you was not Solomon; the one fucking you into waste and dirt was not Solomon, either. You told yourself you needed to love imposter as well, because he looked like your husband; wore his signet ring, too.

At night, you imagined only his softest expressions behind clenched eyelids when he wanted to have his way with you, as something else entirely took his place. A creature so diabolical and unsightly that the servants now awaited your screams to rouse them awake in the murky midnight hours.

Every time they arrived with their candlesticks and oil lanterns, the thrusting spectre receded into the dark as a black mass hardly distinguishable from shadow.

Only Solomon would remain, and he was swift to send the servants away before they could see your improper, disheveled state sprawled across the bed sheets.

In the daytime light, his face stayed familiar and comforting to you and you could bear to see him, form some coherent words.

“Someone might—might see us out here, Solomon. Mr. Medina is supposed to—oh, oh, mmm—he’s due to arrive at any time.” You were given several long kisses, which turned into severe caresses of hot breath when his thrusts turned savage, cock reaching so deep you were starting to feel numb below the waist. A feverous response. “Oh, fuck, fuck, fuck…”

He adjusted himself to lay on your chest, the sweat on your bodies offering an effortless glide and new angle for his cock that made your moans deeper and dire. Such sounds, whether in agony or pleasure, were melodious to him. Addicting drags from a pipe in an opium den; an alcoholic's first sip at breakfast; a cheating man's night with a new lover.

“Wouldn't you like for them to see that? For someone to witness you being fucked into the ground? Surrounded by everything their master loved?” Solomon tucked his face into the curve of your neck and groaned, hips slow and stuttering. “Bartolomé would be the one to find it most tantalizing. His only friend in the world ruining the only person he's ever loved. Wouldn't that be a sight? We could invite him to watch.”

At the time, it had been quite jarring to learn Bartolomé harbored those silent, ardent feelings for you. It had sufficiently pulled you from whatever trance Solomon had lulled you into, reacquainting you with all the sounds of sex and the filth clinging to your skin. It was as though your mind had been locked into a mostly airless, noiseless void that he controlled and released at will.

You held tight to his shoulders as he molded you deeper into the muck and plant litter. The squat, friable walls of soil holding your shape like the cushions in a tomb, whereas Solomon was the man lowering you into the dark earth; the last to see your face before covering it in clay and dirt.

He was in your ear with loud moans that resonated through you, simultaneously as carnal as a beast amidst its seasonal rut, and velvety as the feathery smooth glide of fingers down your spine. His throat rumbled against you, resembling the intensity of a purring housecat nestled near your head in contentment.

At his tipping point, he removed his cock from your body and used the slippery stuff glistening off it to stroke himself; weepy, deep red tip to the base. You received the aftermath of his release in thick ropes across your abdomen and chest, the warmth of it already cooling on your skin while he continuously kneaded the head to force out what remained as if they were dewdrops made from pearls.

“How do you think Bartolomé would fare seeing you like this?” Solomon swept two fingers through the cum in an elegant curl to smear it around his cock. The viscous white thinned into pale gloss on his girth and a sticky residue inside his hand.

Your lips parted to give an answer, but his fingers and taste were faster than your words.

“And… that is all? Truly?” Bartolomé asked, shattering your visions of the recent past as he revealed a compact silver case from inside his vest, pulling a cigarette from within it. “You simply walked into the garden one morning and saw that he had destroyed everything? He gave you no explanation whatsoever?”

The imposter had stolen much of your dignity over the months, but enough of it remained for you to omit every significant detail from your story. You'd only told him that Solomon had cut the heads off of rare flowers, mumbled in a disorienting way, and gave you no difficulty with the gardening shears.

Bartolomé went away from your side for an open window across the spacious sitting room, matching his cigarette and blowing gray plumes out into the dense summer air.

“This is concerning.” He spoke loud enough for you to hear, even with his thumbnail tracing the underside of his lower lip, muffling him somewhat. “Solomon is considerably worse off than I first thought. We need to investigate this, retrace his every step since the moment he left you that night for his uncle's estate.”

“Oh, Bartolomé, that will be very unnecessary.” Solomon announced himself as he walked in through the open doors, offering you a tepid smile, which came nowhere close to reaching his eyes. Your chair jostled slightly as he stood behind it, a weighty hand landing on the tall back above your head. “Why trouble yourself with employing some ludicrous scheme when you could, ah, inquire as to what haunts you instead?”

Bartolomé tamped out his cigarette on the windowsill and pocketed it. “You are ill, Solomon. You may be suffering from some form of hysteria. It's time you visited a doctor, my old friend.”

“Well, that just isn't true.” Solomon kept the neutrality in his tone, but you tracked a rumble of agitation; a warning not far off. His hand followed the curvature of the chair down to the arm that you leaned against, fingers touching your shoulder, lightly kneading you through your clothes.

He was sure to be in Bartolomé’s eyesight as he did this, further aggravating the heavy disquiet. You didn't dare to move out of reach of his touch.

“But, it is true, Solomon!” Bartolomé insisted, gesturing toward the window. “What of your garden? All of your life's work now means nothing, you damned fool! You've snapped, old boy. See a doctor before you do something you regret.”

“That garden was more a source of misery than it was a boon. At any rate, I'm quite finished listening to you harp at me for one night, my dear friend.” Solomon lightly stroked down your cheek with bent fingers, coaxing you to look up at him. “It's time for bed, darling. Us impropertious brutes have kept you up for too long.”

You hesitated, and then stood when Solomon took your arm. “Alright.”

“As usual, your accommodations should exceed expectations. I'll have a servant wake you for breakfast again tomorrow.” It was too soon to call those Solomon's departing words to Bartolomé, as he stopped with you in the doorway, your hand caressing the meat of his forearm. “You know, Bartolomé, I would recommend marrying soon. There is no greater feeling than having the one you love so close to you, don't you think?”

Bartolomé became unreadable as he fished a hand into his vest pocket for the cigarette case again. You were led away for the bedroom before anything else could be said, but you knew that Solomon had struck a nerve.

“That was cruel.” you said.

Once in the bedroom, your back was pressed flush to the door while he unfastened the buttons to your outerwear and the blouse underneath it. Solomon kissed your lips slowly, first, before moving underside your jaw after shucking you down to your undergarments.

“And you are mine. You made your vows to me. Remember that, my sweet.”

You watched him strip out of his clothes and then stroke the length of his cock until it was hard.

“I married someone else. Not you.”

As he dimmed the lights within the space, sweeping the bedroom under a shroud of near pitch black, your annoyance shifted into a swell of anxiety both freezing cold and burning hot. Your body pulsed in rhythm with your wild heartbeat, throat clenched as tightly as infantile flower buds.

You waited for Solomon to touch you, startling once he finally did. His fingers had elongated and sharpened, his touch now far more delicate and methodical.

“Don't worry, he’s still in here with me.”

a/n; so, some notes real quick

do not count this scene as canon bc idk how much I'm going to take from it to incorporate into the actual story. like, certain things will be there fs, but a good chunk won't.

tbh, this didn't go as hard as I thought it was going to. by comparison to the actual story, this is pretty tame. but I've already relented that the full story is just hopelessly slutty and pornographic lmaooo

bartolomé medina was actually included late into my current version of the story outline. I wanted a somewhat paralleling foil character for solomon, and he's who I came up with. in a lot of ways, bartolomé and solomon are very similar, which is why they get along so well as friends. but, they're also starkly different in other aspects (e.g. wealth differences, careers, bartolomé forces his sociability and personality, whereas solomon can't be fucking bothered). tbh, I love bartolomé as a character and this oneshot does not do him justice—at all.

sadiya, mc's maid, is actually the most important supporting character in the entire story and is completely different from her first appearance in imposter. like, completely. I'd like to do one more concept piece where I can actually introduce her.

men moaning is one of the hottest things imo. get out of here with that silent ejaculating bs.

NOW, ONTO QUESTIONS!!!

what are your thoughts on me incorporating the idea that bartolomé is in love with mc into the actual story? there is a possibility of an ending with him if enough folks show interest before the final chapters. or, would you prefer it strictly focused on solomon, the demon, and mc? this subplot would not come to fruition as a side romance or "cheating" plotline. like I said, bartolomé exists mainly as a parallel and foil for solomon.

are you guys interested in smut scenes with actual, explicit details of the demon in his true form (he ain't pretty y'all. this story is majorly psychological for a reason). but, if you kinky fucks want it, I'm happy to oblige.

would having a bolder mc who experimented with things (mainly opium) and has a bit more of a sexually promiscuous background take you out of immersion and be a deterrent, or would you be interested in me continuing that route? be honest.

I dropped several hints in this piece on the inspired identity of the demon in the story. have you guessed who? 👀

how depraved y'all want me to get with the smut scenes fr???

vampire x crime scene cleaner!reader | 16.1k

you're a crime scene cleaner who happens across an advertisement for a mansion housekeeper in exchange for room and board. it's close to work, close to your university, and an easy job. the ultimate package. right away, you notice the owner's beauty as well as his eccentricities, but decide to commit to it. the spiral into depravity and debauchery begins when you're tasked with cleaning the site of a savage murder, solidifying you as a irreplaceable treasure.

warnings; dead dove do not eat; explicit non-con, extreme dubon, sadomasochism, blood play, overstimulation, choking, cigarette burns, smoking, hypnotism, theological themes, exploration of morality, gunshot wounds, extreme & graphic depictions of body horror + gore + grotesque details, graphic depictions of crime scene cleanup, possibly inaccurate depictions of crime scene cleanup (not looking for feedback on it), obsessive & possessive behaviors, heavy prose & details, the entire work is allegorical, murder, vampire is written as a monster bc that's what they are lmao, dividers are used between scenes

reposted from 2kmps; previously proofread by @ceruleansol

I shouldn't have to say it, but I will: nothing in this oneshot is indicative of my personal viewpoints. it is entirely fictitious.

this was a project that took me quite a bit of time to do, so I would be immensely appreciated if you'd please reblog + interact with it!! I'd love to hear your feedback!!

Another internet search bore fruit.

The image bouncing back at you from your phone had been hastily taken with a tremble in your hand, all the while launching a few too many cautious looks across your shoulder to either end of the dim, long hallway making up part of the second floor. There wasn't any particular rationale for your apprehension and busy eyes but the belief the mansion owner wouldn't be too pleased to see you taking pictures of his valuables rather than cleaning them.

That fear hadn't stopped you from reverse image searching a good couple of curiosities over the widening gap of time you had been living there.

Tonight was a Chalmette table vase displayed on a pedestal in the hall; brassy gold gilding cradled a somewhat drab white bloom that reached high and sprouted open to a hollow inside. Similar surviving articles went for thousands.

You totaled the prices of everything so far as enough to outright buy a house on the more modest side of town.

There was a daring thought that loomed in the back of your mind, an ugly little thing that told you one or two missing antiques wasn't any big deal. He wouldn't miss them, let alone even notice they were gone, because he was the strangest man you had ever met.

Four months ago, he had only ever introduced himself by the name Montague, letting an anticipatory stillness hang in the air while you waited for him to finish. He never did, handsome features lifting as his dark eyes thinned and smile inched higher. He had you in a tight handshake.

"I enjoyed reading the resume you sent in with your response to my advertisement." He had traces of an accent intact but had cleverly adapted to one more common to the area. "You're the first person I've come across wanting the room who's done that. It really stood out to me. A crime scene cleaner? Must be a difficult job."

"I know it was probably overkill, but I think this will be perfect for me." You were led to a suede armchair, his hand anchoring onto your shoulder to lower you into the seat. He sat across from you in something similar, one leg crossing. "I recently had to move out of my other place, and the university will be about an hour closer. My work won't be as far of a drive, either. I—I, uh, clean some gross stuff, so taking care of your house won't be anything."

Even after that spiel, Montague never let his smile slip. Rather, it seemed to widen as though delighted by your oversharing. He looked like a man basking in glee over a rare find, an offer he couldn't possibly turn away.

"All amenities in the house are yours." This was after he showed you to one of the rooms on the second floor: a capacious, well-dressed space behind a red door at the end of the hall. "As long as you listen to a few rules and keep things clean, we should have a very amicable... cohabitation."

You thought it was an odd choice of wording. "Okay. Well, what do I need to know?"

"No guests." It was immediate, his tone suddenly a touch edgy, razored, unyielding. "Not unless I give you explicit permission beforehand. I keep many important valuables; they're very dear to me. Also, do not invite anyone in unless I am there."

Again, odd, but it was his house.

"Sure," you said agreeably, having half the thought to write down these peculiarities of his. "What next?"

He was set on your shoulder, reaching out to pull a thin, frayed thread off of your jumper. "The downstairs—as in, the basement—is my personal space. If I need you down there, I will ask you for you to go down. You can go anywhere else in the house, on the property. None of it concerns me."

"Why the basement, though?" It felt damaging to press a question like that so early on, but you figured it was innocent enough. "This house is so big that we could be on the same floor and hardly see each other."

The muscles around his mouth twitched slightly, only once. You still noticed it. Noted: he didn't like to be questioned. "Sorry, I'm not trying to-"

"It's cold downstairs." he injected, shifting to look around the room as though taking in the newness of it as well. "I make sure it stays comfortable all year, all throughout the house, but the cold suits me best."

With how downright frosty his skin felt in that handshake earlier—on a mild day in mid-spring—you thought that explanation checked out. He must have only just come up to greet you at the front entrance.

You tried to forget the feeling. "Alright. Next?"

"Oh," he restrained an unseemly laugh, using one hand to crowd into a pocket on his dark blazer, "there is nothing else, at least nothing pertinent. It's my understanding that we're both quite busy, so this would be the current arrangement unless something changes."

What changes? You wanted to ask, thwarted to silence when he revealed some sort of silver thing pinched between his fingers with a thick handkerchief. It was a dainty-seeming contraption with chains linking several old skeleton keys at the end. The fabric he used to hold the clip concealed all of the elegant tracery that made up its shape.

"Traditionally, this is called a chatelaine. It’s something I’ve modified for you to get around the house. It’ll be easier to clean." Montague said, fast to force the mess of cold silver and chains into your palm, rubbing down his fingers with the handkerchief afterward. "The smallest key is to your room. The largest one opens the doors to go outside, so don't lose that. One of them is meant for doors in the basement—can't recall which."

He could see the wariness behind your eyes, a worrying crease forming in your brow. "This house has been around for a long time. I've just never gotten around to modernizing the locks."

Other questions came to you, but he hardly acted interested in entertaining them. You let him swivel on black soles, stopping him just as he reached the doorway.

"Why haven't other housekeepers worked out?"

Montague let his fingers rest on glazed woodwork framing the threshold, drumming out a soothing rhythm while considering an answer for all of two seconds. "In short? They couldn't follow the rules. Now, let me show you to the yard."

Afterward, the so-called cohabitation had become a seamless blend for you both. You had learned right away that Montague wasn't one for idle chatter and niceties without purpose. He had deviated from it once, on move-in day, to reassure you that the mysterious nature of your life schedule and odd hours you were called to a clean scene wouldn’t be a source of concern.

Shortly after settling your things around the house, the reason for his amenable attitude was a little more apparent. Several times a month, you would be pulled from your forensics projects to the landing at the end of the hall, piqued by fresh voices always indistinguishable at first, and folded your waist over the railing to see down.

The top of his head, hair short, impeccably styled, and ash-brown, was the first thing you noticed, followed by someone on his arm. Sometimes a woman, sometimes a man—always conventionally attractive, always utterly enraptured by him. It struck a nerve with you once or twice, finding your thoughts swimming bitterly: Of course a man who looked like him would go for types like that!

Why did he act so much differently with them than you?

He wasn't nearly as friendly and affable as he was making himself out to be.

You stopped peeking down on him after an instance where his eyes shot straight up, pinning you where you stood. He simpered at you before leading his companion away to the basement, and that was it. You never saw them leave and never bothered to ask.

Tonight was different, however, both in the way you nearly toppled the two-figure Chalmette vase off its pedestal with flighty fingers and a duster, and the echo of a scream piercing the hollow halls to you. It stayed in one spot on the first floor, luring you down the center staircase with your duster clutched to you like a sword. At that point, your heart bursting in your ears was louder than the agonized cries resonating around the corner.

You looked around, spine wrapped in dread as another scream, weak, garbled, and wet, came from the basement, and then nothing at all. It was soundless in the house. Distantly, one of the clocks mounted in the kitchen archway toned onward. You followed its beat with the shuffle of your feet.

Hello, hello? Those words clung tightly in your throat, yet you were too afraid to announce yourself like that. Still, nothing came as you slowly pulled at the basement doorknob, brass and freezing and unlocked. The stairway plunging down inside was filled with inky black, so dark you couldn't get your eyes to adjust to it.

Is everything okay down there? Hello? Hello? You ran the imaginary chatter through your mind, lips sealed but trembling during your slow descent, the path now illuminated by white glow from your phone. At the bottom, the stone stairs turned into seamless gray marble and red wetness crawling toward the soles of your slippers.

"What–" You gasped, taking a step back while flicking the flashlight higher, deeper into the basement. The vivid red puddle glistened in your light, widening around a motionless figure with pale skin—a blonde woman you didn't know. Her face pointed up at the ceiling, twisted in terror, black tracks of mascara curving along her cheeks.

She was naked on the floor, surrounded by her own blood, something you didn't have to look at twice. Your breaths grew harsh, taking in the sight of her neck, or lack thereof; there wasn't much left of it. Only a few stringy bits of sinew and muscle kept it from a full decapitation, and blood still pulsed out in spurts from mangled arteries and veins.

A motion nearby made your nape prickle. It was like feet padding across wet pavement after a fresh rain, except this smell carried the malodor of rust and something sour under your nose.

You settled a pillar of light on the source, capturing the view of Montague standing amid the bloodbath, sickly skin bare and saturated in rich crimson.

Something was wrong with him, came an instantaneous, instinctual reaction the moment his head spun toward you, catching pale eyeshine in the white light.

The bones in his jaw cracked as the length of it began to recede into the semblance of something more man to you, rows of jagged teeth retracting into the depths of his throat until only a pair of long incisors remained.

Montague skimmed the tip of his tongue along his lower lip, smiling at you affectedly, saying as though it were some trife thing, "She started screaming."

You were gone and out of the basement after that, clearing the woman's body and kicking away the slippers on your feet when they squelched with blood. Montague said something after you when shrieks ripped out of your lungs and reverberated through the house. You winced as the basement door let out a hollow rattle when he collided with it, heart matching the rhythm of the skin on your feet slapping against old marble, thoughts disarrayed, frantic the closer you got to the front door.

Almost there. Almost there. Almost there. Oh God! Oh God! Oh God! You were panting in unison with the vicious chants.

The doorknob was in your hand. The door was open—and it was thrown shut with the force of your body thrust against it, fingers wrenched off of the handle and enveloped in Montague's cold fingers as he pushed himself flush into you.

You felt his palm clamp around your mouth, whittling your screams into panicked whimpers, nostrils flaring with your ragged breaths.

"Ah, no, no." He had to stoop his neck to talk into your ears. "Shh, shh, shhh. Far too loud. I don't like screaming. Shh, shh, shhhh."

Tears seared red behind your eyes, making you think you could follow the warmth down your face as they filled the crevices in his hand. "It's really, truly a pity. She was a pretty one but far too smart. I'm usually decent at picking out the ones who wouldn't suspect anything or, at least, catching them before they try to scream.

"You'll have to forgive me. I swear to you I'm not ordinarily that messy. I prefer to keep everything tidy, especially so you don't have to go down there. After all, you're already so busy. You're already doing so much. I can't recall when I last saw you relax."

The weight of his palm softened, a wordless agreement that you honored with continued silence as he used that arm to lean against the door. His voice shifted around your head to your other ear. "That's it. Just wonderful. There's no need for screaming, is there? It's only the two of us."

"Are—are..." You couldn't get it out, lips and throat suddenly sucked dry. "Don't kill me, please. Please. Please."

His chest quaked while a subdued, eerily delighted laugh hissed through his lips. "Kill you? Oh, no, no, no. Never. How could I ever kill you when you're so remarkable? My home has never looked so beautiful and lived in. I'm enjoying how it looks with you in it."

You wilted away from his lips sinking to a spot below your ear, now taking far too much notice of his erection curving up along your lower back. It felt disgustingly wrong to wonder whether the violence and blood turned him on, or it was you and your fear. The man wasn't even human; that much was clear.

"What are you?" There was no shortage of daring questions in your arsenal. Montague was beginning to find the charm in them.

"That's quite difficult for me to answer." He let his chin lay on your shoulder. "I've been called many things over the centuries. I suppose the closest anyone has ever gotten is vampire, but even that's not quite right. You're free to guess as much as you'd like, though."

He was satisfied when you didn't, freeing the weight off of his arm to slide his hand under the hem of your shirt, fingertips still slick with that woman's blood as he explored your navel. You were too aware of the roundness of his fingernails stepping across your flesh, sometimes pressing deep, and other times a light touch you needed to scratch. His throat vibrated against your shoulder.

"What are you thinking? I'd love to hear it." He wanted to devour your fear in more ways than just feeling you wince. "Well? Tell me."

"I want to go." Go? Where could you possibly go that he couldn’t find you? If he ripped out the side of a woman's neck, he could track you down.

He leaned his cheek into your ear again, relishing the warmth that spread into him. "Where would you go? Who would you tell? Humor me, where is the first place you'd go?"

"The police," you said.

Montague let out a pleased hum. "Of course. It only makes sense to report a terrible scene such as that to them. Forensics and the police play together often, don't they?"

Your nod was weak.

"I know how hard you've been studying, how much stress you're under to commit to your degree, your work—to me." His hand crept along to your stomach, fingers splaying wide across the protective layer of skin and fat. "Let's say they were to find something I left behind. Who becomes a suspect in their eyes when they learn that I have someone who tidies up after me? Who knows the dirty insides of cleaning up anything and everything?"

You were starting to panic, fitfully struggling against his body. It's like he was made of stone. "They wouldn't accuse me of murdering anyone."

"Haven't you seen the news lately? Are you so sure?" he said derisively. "No, perhaps you're right. Maybe you'd be fortunate, and they wouldn't have your head for murder, but they would certainly try to peg you with something else. As an accomplice, maybe? And that's assuming that I don't disappear and let rip you apart.

"Can you imagine it? Can you feel your heart break at the very thought of losing it all? Your degree? Your job? Safety? The world is cruel, darling. You'd never have another moment of peace or anonymity. Anywhere you'd go, you'd be found, every alias sullied with your sins. All because you decided to speak up about it."

You knew he meant to send you downstairs to do something about the mess, spend hours scrubbing and mopping until what had once been there was a secret that thickened your tongue and made it hard to swallow. No one would ever find out, but you would carry it in every waking thought until, one morning, the cute barista on Market Street had an eerie semblance to that dead woman, and the light roast in your hand suddenly looked so red.

"Thump. Thump. Thump." Montague mocked the heavy thrum of your heart behind your ribs, his cold fingers skimming your nipples before resting over your sternum. "You can go if you'd like, but I'll find you. I'll hear your little heart until it bursts and drag you right back here. You're mine."

The push of his body gradually faded away, giving your chest the room to expand, leaving you to gulp quivering, greedy breaths that didn't stop even as the pads of his feet grew distant.

He called back to you, "Give me ten minutes or so, and then come down."

You were already partway through the front door with your car keys to pop the trunk when, floating like a spectre's moans in still night air, his voice reached out once more, "You may want to clean up yourself first. You have blood all over your face."

༺ ♰ ༻

A damp towel came before your descent back into the basement. In tow on your shoulders were three bags of absorbent, the fancy stuff hospitals liked to use to throw on puke and piss and anything else they just lazily wanted to sweep around. It worked for blood in smaller quantities, blood that was still wet, anyway.

The woman hadn't been dead long enough for her body fluids to dry, so you didn't anticipate needing anything except the basics stowed in your car trunk.

You weren't sure what you expected to see down there, noticing the lights were turned on high, fully illuminating the gray marble, the furthest reaches of the blood puddle with your slippers saturated dark red and ruined. What came as a shock was the woman's dead eyes and shredded neck being nowhere in sight. Montague had moved her body but to where?

For some reason, you were drawn to ridiculous spots like the walls, ceiling, and tiny cramped corners that he could have feasibly stuffed her in. There was no sickly trail of blood leading any which way, droplets only reaching as far as the stairs and first landing where you had been pursued—nothing else.

Where did he take her? Part of you was ready to turn a blind eye to all of this because you knew you would have to in order to keep everything. If you kept your head low and groveled a little bit, maybe he'd get bored and leave you alone, biding you the time you needed to finish your degree. But, that'd be two years of this.

You weren't sure you could stomach it.

As you moved granules of absorbent through blood with coarse bristles from the kitchen broomstick—shifting the puddle more than the actual absorbent—you wondered if he could hear your heart now from wherever he was.

You thought about a lot of things while letting your eyes roam the space. It was enormous, taking up the entire underside of the house, outfitted impressively with mahogany accents, sprawling bookshelves, armchairs, and loveseats pulled tight in leather and velvet. Across the room was a disheveled bed, creamy sateen sheets in a luscious heap but otherwise undisturbed.

To the adjacent end of this expanse were two doors you didn't notice at first, one a little taller than yourself in height, about as wide as any normal arm span, and looked old, so old that everything else was too new. Even from where you stood, you knew it'd take a skeleton key. The other door was more coherent with the rest of the basement, cleaner but certainly still part of the house's original construction.

By the time Montague had returned, you already had much of the ordeal pitched into a biohazard bag with some trace remnants putting you on your knees to scrub away. You hadn't realized he was even there until the tips of his shoes—brown leather loafers with a scalloped tassel near the toes—appeared in your peripheral, sending you launching back onto your hocks.

"This work is spectacular. I knew I had a good feeling giving that room to you." he said with a beguiling smile. All of the blood was gone; he was clean in a dark dressing robe with black trousers, a look you hated that you saw as alluring. "Don't forget to clean the floors upstairs. We made quite a mess there as well."

"What happened to that woman?" You were asking your pesky questions again. Montague wasn't so sure he found them as charming now, but you were still a prize.

You leaned away as he crouched in front of you, nearly risking the soles of his shoes in the blood and hydrogen peroxide. For the first time since meeting, you kept eye contact and saw that his reached a depth you didn't think could be possible for a human. He wasn't touching you, yet it felt like he had you caged, trapped in a vise that held you tight.

He did touch you then, grazing the side of your face with a thumb. Suddenly, he brought it to his lips and licked it as he rose to full height.

"You still had some blood just there on your cheek." There was an armchair a few feet away that he dropped into, withdrawing a gold compact from a chest pocket on his way down. "Don't worry. I wouldn't ask you to carry away the bodies. I'm not that Roman."

"That's not what I asked." you rejoined.

Montague tucked a cigarette between his lips, igniting it with a match he kept inside the compact. His first few puffs looked like they calmed him as he crossed a leg and settled deeper into the leather. "You shouldn’t expect answers to things you don’t need to know—or want to.”

But he humored you with a slight lean of his head towards the old door far away. "The original owner of this house was ingenious and built tunnels that were used to shuffle people in and out. Mistresses. Servants. More unsavory things—you must remember the era. At any rate, it stretches beyond the house and some ways off. I do not recommend ever going inside."

You understood now why you never saw any of the dates he brought home leave. And you believed every bit of his warning.

It inspired you to move away from the grim reality dwelling beyond that old door. You hovered over the same spot, drenching the floor with more of the disinfectant, grasping for a distraction. "I didn't know vampires could smoke. Isn't blood enough for you?”

Montague flicked his cigarette over an ashtray beside his chair. "Well, we all have our vices. Mine just happens to be five or six of these a day. Keeps enough of the edge off so you get to sleep at night."

Something about that comment made the entire stretch of the basement feel so confining—claustrophobic, even. Your back was wide open to it, to his ravening gaze and leather toe turning fluid circles as though to pace himself before lunging.

"I have class in six hours." You finished the job by tying off the bag. "I'd like to get the upstairs done and take a shower."

"Of course. Try to get some sleep, you've had quite a night." He didn't move to see you out. "Oh, and leave the bag. I'll dispose of it."

༺ ♰ ༻

Meredith Nimu died approximately twenty-three days ago after a stroke left her immobilized in her favorite armchair. Her body wasn't peeled away from the murky-green polyester until day twenty-four, following enough neighbor complaints about a bunch of rats dying in the vents.

Getting rid of the chair was half the battle in this case, something that Meredith's overzealous, recently divorced daughter spouted off as sacrilegious. She insisted that the carpet cleaner she used for her obese dogs with raw patches on their legs could do it all. Your supervisor had been inflectionless when telling her it didn't work like that.

One of your teammates, a middle-aged black man affectionately nicknamed “Hoss” had unceremoniously slammed the apartment door shut and flipped the lock so the daughter's rancorous eruptions were somewhat contained outside. The other half of the duo responsible for pitching the chair, T.J., a white man who could never tan, wheezed out a laugh as he labored a hard bristle brush through the gunk left behind from Meredith's decay.

"Boss ain't gonna be happy about that." T.J. couldn't commit to the act of a brownnoser even if he wanted to. A couple more chortles rattled through his respirator. They were infectious, ridiculous sounds that coaxed similar from Hoss when he rejoined the effort to get the job done and over with.

You could still hear the daughter on the other side of the door, never once allowing your supervisor a word in edgewise. A part of you wanted to pity her, perhaps conjure up a shred of empathy for someone so completely enmeshed in the throes of grief and anger. She was clearly spiraling, her entire life yanked out from under her—and she was free-falling with nothing to catch her, no thin wire she could snag in the bend of her fingers and watch as the velocity of that cruelly, cleanly severed white tendon and bone.

Where would she fall after that? You didn't know. You didn't care. She could regain control over her life even without fingers, but what about you? No one understood how disconcerting it was to know that your survival depended on a vampire's good mood. An old woman was meant to expire, but you were young and had aspirations—yet that could be stolen from you just as quickly as a clot could kill the brain.

It wasn't fucking fair.

Hoss had called out to you repeatedly until the hard brushes stopped scratching the floor, and he and T.J. were settled back on their heels, staring at you. You were used to leveraging your commitments in life as a means to get them off your case, but even they could tell this was different.

"You've been real spacey lately." It was enough to gently reel you back to the moment, eyes unstuck from remnants of putrid matter hidden under a deluge of chemicals and soap. Now you were thinking that the landlord would probably have to replace this entire spot in the flooring. It would be an expensive fix.

"Everything okay at home?" Hoss tried again, emulating fatherly concern in his tone and sidelong stare. It was something he couldn't help since you were so similar in age to his adult kids. "I don't think I've seen you eat today. We oughta finish up here up and grab somethin' quick on the way back.”

"Sorry, yeah, it's just the usual things." They didn't know what that meant to you, but readily accepted with dour expressions masked by their respirators. "I think I saw a gyro truck down the street."

As many times as you had regurgitated the same thing when they pried into your well-being, you were surprised they still asked at all. That made it hard to wave after them as you pulled the lever to the trunk, waiting to be left alone once the job was done to stack half your weight in absorbent until the back bowed to it.

It was just past two in the morning when you were locking the front door of Montague's sprawling estate behind you. Every time you did, a part of you hesitated to seal it the whole way, as though if you did, your final traces of freedom would be stripped away entirely.

"Welcome home!" Montague came out from prowling somewhere in the shadows, seeming to materialize from the darkest parts your eyes couldn't adapt to. He was in a dressing robe again, this one forest green with gold embroidery and a burgundy handkerchief tucked away nicely in his breast pocket.

He already had a cigarette lit between his knuckles, fussing with the little stick as he went to an open window, sucked in, and expelled pungent gray smoke. "I apologize. There's a bit of a mess for you tonight. It's unlike me to be so untidy, but it shouldn't take you too long—oh, darling, don't make that face."

"Why can't you get blood from other sources, like a blood bank?" It's been on your mind for a while, but Montague had a habit of turning petulant if you asked him too much.

He was in good shape tonight, though, despite still puffing away antsily. "Where's the satisfaction in simply being given what I want? Blood banks are a finite supply, but out there"—he gestured through the open window—"there is an infinite supply from any walk of life that I so choose. Did you know that not all blood is equal?"

You sensed him at your back, awash with that same vulnerability as the night on your knees in the basement. He strolled along with you while you collected your things, examined his leftovers, which fortunately wasn't as sensational as before. It looked like a Rorschach inkblot almost, purple-red and pristine, obviously untouched for some time.

Just like that dead blonde woman, there was nothing left behind of the victim except what Montague was too careless to handle himself.

"The worst blood is what you find in hospitals or on the streets. It doesn't matter their type; it all tastes like shit." he continued, even while you worked. Just like before, he sat himself nearby and observed your process with gross fascination. "In a pinch, though, I do what I must. It doesn't matter if a man is homeless or a woman is looking for a night out. When I hear their hearts dance, that thump, thump, thump—oh, I have to have it. I can taste them through their skin, even before I sink my teeth in.

"The fear in their eyes. The ragged breaths I see in their chests, watching their bellies pulse. I like to think in those moments they know exactly what's going to happen, like little flies in a spider's web."

Montague let more smoke slither out from his lips in skinny, swirling wisps that dissipated once it touched the air. The haze of it remained, just traceable to your eye. "I always find it interesting that they all struggle, even as they're writhing in their own blood. Sometimes I'll count how long it takes for them to die."

These weren't confessions of a madman because that would imply he was human. He was treating you akin to the way an old man recounted the fondness of his flawed, flickering memories. There were sensations of joy and affection in the work he did, a true love and visceral desire for carnage and suffering that made it hard for you to stomach. A few times throughout his soliloquy, you needed to bear your weight on the kitchen broom to keep yourself from toppling from nausea.

You shouldn't have been curious. "Has anyone ever survived?"

The surrounding space grew darker, not from loss of light but from the way his lower face sunk behind the hand wielding the cigarette. You saw his smile widen through sickly appendages and faint smoke.

His response pierced straight through you. "I'm looking right at it."

Suddenly, the urge to run rushed forefront in your mind, an instinctual reaction that you had trouble wrestling over with logic. The broomstick was easily pulled from your fingers and discarded onto the floor with a reverberating clatter that made your spine race with cold needles as Montague stepped into your proximity.

You shivered against the hands slowly climbing your neck to the underside of your jaw, cradling your face as he lifted it to meet his eyes. Something was so wrong with how black they were; you didn't see a pupil, nor did your reflection stare back at you in them. It's almost as though there was nothing there at all, the dark of them growing into an abysmal chasm that made your vision cross and blur, eyelids weighing like lead when you felt him kiss you.

His lips were the same kind of cold as the rest of him but full and unrelenting, never granting you the chance to mold the kiss in any other way. Surprisingly, the taste of stale smoke on his breath was just slight, a mediocre vexation you overlooked the moment his hands started groping you under your clothes.

And you didn't think much of it when your back settled into the clean linens on your bed, skin flushed with the crisp evening air and lips mapping their way south across your stomach and navel, delving lower to your core. It was too dark in your room to see down your body at the top of Montague's head, but you felt him with your fingers, coiling pieces of his ash-brown hair to your knuckles while he pushed your thighs wide open for him.

An anxious patter swelled in your chest, a vague understanding that something was horrible about this, but you were too wrapped up in a dreamy fog to think about it. More than the resounding boom of your heart, you heard your own breaths dissolve into lewd moans and slurred pleas for him to do more, more, more.

It didn't sound like you. It didn't feel like you despite knowing that build-up in your abdomen better than most things in your body. The hands in his hair, the back bending off of the mattress like an archway, the shaking limbs, and the cries begging for more were someone else entirely up until the very moment rapture fluttered behind your eyes in searing white, body deluged in hot release that left your scalp tingling and toes curling and spend on your sheets.

"Give me more." You tasted him again, his tongue pushing hard into your mouth where those salty notes of yourself lingered on your cheeks. His silhouette melded with the rest of the room, tangible only in the way he roamed every surface of you.

Montague had shucked the clothes from both your bodies earlier, preferring to lean into the flush of heat you radiated. Everything was only skin-deep away from him; he could feel your pulse throb on his lips when he teased himself against your carotid, your radial, trailing all the way to the powerful beat of your femoral nestled there in your groin.

His teeth came close many times to piercing you, allowing him a sliver of a taste like a parched king waiting for a drop of golden wine. But half the thrill of having you around was denying himself of you, knowing well that if he were to start, then he'd never be able to stop, and he'd fully hamper your dreams of escaping.

The air smelled like you now, heavy and like damp skin and your fluids soaking into the linens. He watched your face bunch and fall apart when he split you open with his cock, hips colliding, your skin sure to bruise as his thrusts turned savage. There wasn't much left in his heart anymore. Most of it had atrophied over the centuries, and yet the sound of yours spurred him on.

He could follow the path of your blood through your body, an extensive subject he had studied and dissected at length in his lifetime. The most vulnerable spots were gorged and worked the hardest, almost glowing red through your skin for him. When he thrust a little bit harder, a little bit faster, and felt your fingertips pushing against his chest, he heard your heart be the loudest it ever had been.

"That's it. That's it. That's it." His own breaths were ragged now. The sheer exhilaration of pushing his lips deeper, hot sweat leaving a slick layer on them, and that one big artery in your neck pounding out was doing everything for him.

Your frantic pants were a close second. He could feel you unraveling, tightening around his cock until you were soundlessly writhing on the mattress, clutching anything you could bunch together. The final few thrusts he made were purposeful; they were forceful and jolted your body, a show to make sure you wouldn't forget the feeling of him inside of you.

The clean linens were sodden with cum, some still dripping out of you while you lay there, legs splayed enough so you wouldn't feel it stick to your thighs. Whatever haze had been hanging over your eyes before lifted away, leaving you ruined and exhausted on the sheets but not alone.

"You've got class in a few hours, don't you?" Montague said from above, shoulders nestled in your headboard while one leg hung off the side of the bed. He was smoking again, acting the calmest you had witnessed him. "I don't really think you're in any shape for that. Why don't you stay home today?"

You were too spent to respond to him, somehow using the occasional breaths he blew out into the vast room to lull you into a dreamless sleep.

༺ ♰ ༻

Shin Nakamura had been a selfish man in life. Mid-fifties, thinning hair, and twice divorced from women who knew better—his tenants did not. He had built a reputation on the north side of town for hidden costs and faulty appliances that were never fixed. Once or twice in the past four years you had cleaned up scenes, they came out of Nakamura's buildings in the summertime, stuck to the floor and infested with maggots and flies in different orifices.

Everyone had asked at one point, yourself included, how he was able to get away with that level of blatant cruelty and disregard—and the answer was as simultaneously simple, complex, and terrible as poverty. The north end was an area notorious for local crime and violence, but more than that, it was forgotten in favor of gentrifying other areas of the city—pretty little boutiques that'd make a splash on social media and a couple of upscale dining spots, all of those meant to change the online scales deeming an area's walkability, and therefore, profitability.

The blind eye most city commissioners turned to the north end made it an easy life for Shin to do as he pleased without many consequences despite living in the area himself. Most of everyone found it an odd sort of justice when he was discovered in his office, unrecognizable from how badly the dozens of stab wounds had disfigured his face and body. One look was enough to know that it was personal, a tenant who had received their condemnation via a neon-pink eviction letter hastily taped to an off-white door.

Only, this time, Shin chose a person backed into a corner at their breaking point. There wasn't much left to lose, yet Shin had ultimately lost it all. Rumor had it that no one sold out the tenant who committed the crime, something even the more moralistic part of yourself could fathom. These were the cases that painted a grim picture of your future in forensics and often speared to the front of your mind at the worst of times—could you really be part of the reason why a person shattered by the powers of society goes to jail?

Shin Nakamura was a terrible man, but were his crimes punishable by that sort of torture? What about the tenants who probably heard Shin screaming for help, crying in agony—were they any better than murderers themselves?

What did that mean for you? An accomplice who quietly scrubbed clean murders at a monster's behest, you allowed those people to be swallowed up by Montague under a guise of fear, or was it selfishness?

That discomfort lasted you your entire shift, like an incredibly nauseating pill with a bad smell that sat in your nose for hours. You couldn't wipe away the thoughts like you could dried blood on smoke-stained walls or lumps of serrated flesh and fat wedged between slabs of wood on the floor.

"Man, he coulda been cleaner about this." T.J. had his feet planted solidly on the middle step of a ladder, well at work with a long-handled brush pushed flat to the ceiling. The splatter had gone that far, earning a few awestruck coos from him and Hoss earlier. "It would've made our lives easier."

It was a normal joke. You'd laughed at the exact same one many times before, even finessed your own commentary in there on occasion because the dead can't sue, and a murderer had no rights—but now, you thought it'd taste bad on your tongue.

The two hulking men noticed, far sharper than you gave them credit for. Or maybe you were just worse at hiding things than you thought. They didn't allude to anything until everyone was packed up in the van, dried from the sweaty protective suits and summer heat by the AC.

"Listen, it ain't my business, and I swear I've been trying my best not to ask." There was a furtive look linked between Hoss and T.J.; it was something they had talked about when you weren't around. "That guy you're living with. He isn't doing anything to you, right? You used to talk about him all the time in the beginning. Haven’t heard a peep about him in ages. God, you're not living in your car, are you?"

From the outside in, you weren't doing much to try to embellish fancy stories and reasons onto your drastic change over the months. You simply let it be and navigated every day with the hope you'd remember where you were going with your head down. It probably didn't look too good to a paternal man like Hoss, and to T.J., who had several younger siblings.

"No, it's not him—" But, of course, it really was and everything surrounding his cruelty, everything he made you do, and what you never refuted. "I'm just perpetually exhausted. I'm sure you've heard that from Sylvie and Deshaun while they've been in uni."

"All the damn time." Hoss beamed, chest perked a little higher with the mention of his children. It wasn't enough to diffuse the tension lingering in the van, however. "Just know, I'd do for you what I'd do for my babies—put the fear of God in that man. If he puts a finger on you, you let me know."

T.J. gave an agreeable hum, fingers sticking to the steering wheel as he moved them around, making a turn down some street. "We'll catch him by surprise and everything. I'll call in a couple favors, grab a few shovels and bags of cement from my dad's place. It's all good."

For some reason, their entire spiel only spiked your uneasiness, and suddenly you were far too aware of your bladder. It was enough initiative for T.J. to floor the gas and get back to headquarters, giving you the chance to break away and race the remnants of daylight all the way home.

༺ ♰ ༻

It had never happened before, but you managed to catch Montague by surprise when he walked through the front door to find you standing there in the foyer. The kitchen broom wrapped in your hands was a nasty ploy, along with the look you cast between him and a young man not any older than yourself. Again, just like all the others, you didn't recognize him. Montague's victims were fast, fleeting fixations for him, none worthy of names or an identity in his eyes. You suspected this guy was much the same.

Montague's bewilderment was swept away by a smile and laxing posture. He had settled back into his element. "You're home early today. I didn't expect to see you until much later. Not much to the scene, I assume?"

"It was pretty bad." A certain stiffness trailed on the end of your words, letting them echo through the hall and hang in the cool evening air. The young man was fast to perceive that tension: the tightness in your shoulders, fingers subtly wringing against the cracked wooden broom. Montague's anticipative smile climbed higher the longer he looked at you.

Would it be such a bad thing to turn around and pretend you had never seen him come home with that other man? You considered doing it, hiding upstairs and using your headphones until everything seeping through turned into an amalgamation of ambient noise that meant nothing to you, and you willed away the guilt like you'd always done.

In that moment, you thought about Meredith Nimu's apoplectic daughter, a woman so embittered by her own suffering that she was foul and relentless to anyone she crossed paths with. You thought about Shin Nakamura, a greedy, pitiless man who'd rather let coroners scrape up his tenant's remains rather than grant them mercy while they were alive and had been left in pieces because of it.

You thought of them and all their wickedness and edged your gaze towards the young man still standing in the doorway with his hand holding it ajar, clean fingernails picking at chipping paint, just steps from outside. "I think you should leave."

Run! Run! You'd better run away as fast as you can! Nothing would stop Montague from keeping his prey there, if that's what he chose to do. He did the opposite of that, and that was, simply, nothing at all. No pretty blandishments, nor a mouthful of teeth. Rather, now, he was particularly piqued by what you were trying to do.

To the young man, he had meddled into something rather egregious, probably convinced it was extramarital. You battled a surge of pride blooming inside you, shifting your chest a little higher, anchoring your spine back into your body.

"Don't come back here." You didn't need to say anything else. He was gone after pinching out a look of disgust towards Montague, tutting at him with his upper teeth showing through a curled lip.

Nothing happened for a while, not until the front door was secured after his departure. You were left to that responsibility, triple-checking the lock, while Montague ambled deeper into the house, but not too far away as you could follow the leisurely path by his heel strike. There was a rhythm in how he moved. It was deliberate, as though mimicking something.

It took you five paces to figure out he was miming your heartbeat, and he only stopped once it quickened in your chest. He appeared from around the corner, still taking his time reaching you, toying with some trinkets displayed on shelves built into alcoves throughout the lower floor.

You couldn't explain what you were feeling at that moment. Of the thousands—maybe millions—of victims Montague had taken in the previous times, you had just deprived him of one. That man would continue living, and he would tell his friends tomorrow about the weird night he had, and he would never have to be grateful that you saved him from a hellish death.

Yes, oh yes. Even as Montague approached you, carried by his deft gait with both halves of his gold compact open in his palm, you couldn't help but be in complete awe of yourself. A life continued outside of this mausoleum, and it was all because of you. You were entirely different from Meredith Nimu's daughter and Shin Nakamura, and, for once, your hands weren't sullied by bleach, blood, and body matter.

All that heaviness you had been carrying was suddenly so much lighter, and you felt like your chest could open up as wide as the room where you stood. The breaths you took were dry and cold in your throat, yet fresh as though you were walking outside in wintertime.

Montague must've seen something he didn't like on your face because he sucked down on his cigarette for a while, winding his wrist with it at his side once he was adequately calm.

"Did it feel good? I've only seen you this happy while I was fucking your brains out." It was jarring to hear him talk like that. He took another quick drag and let it out slowly as he rounded you. "Truthfully, darling, I didn't think you were the type to break the rules—on purpose, anyway. But I suppose we all get a little wound up every now and then, right? I've already forgiven you."

And then, you watched him drop the cigarette to the marble and snuff it underfoot until the weak ember was turned to soot. A black smear was left behind when he took his foot away. His stare into you was unwavering. "Clean it up."

You figured this was how a frightened animal felt when it wanted something within reach of an observant predator because you were trying to think of all the ways to get close without getting too close. It was a pitiful, humorous sight to him, seeing your steps forward so light and on the verge of bolting. But he showed no intention of doing anything more.

Still with the broom in hand, your knuckles turned stark around the handle while sweeping the remains towards you. It would take more elbow grease to get up that smudge, and he knew that just as well.

He reached for the broom and snapped it to a halt, making you jump, jaw clenching. A noiseless gasp lurched in your throat, his fingers wound tight into the hair at your crown as he yanked your head back to show all the fleshiness of your neck.

"What will you do about it, darling?" His lips were already cold and flush to the artery dancing in the curvature built of skin, muscle, and tendon. Your teeth chattered as the wetness of his tongue followed that intricate, breathtaking network inside of you as far as the neckline of your shirt would let him. "A man has to eat. Have you ever seen it? A man near starvation and the sorts of things he'll do to survive? Why, I've heard stories of desperate, little men eating their own lovers—their children—themselves just to claw around for a little longer. It's inspiring, I think."

He dragged you away then, up the stairs and through the hallway on the second floor to your bedroom, fingers still nested your hair until the moment you were shoved down onto fresh linens. There wasn't anywhere for you to go once he joined you on the mattress, feeling it bend towards his weight.

"Don't be afraid." he said this with all the fond familiarity of a lover, blunt fingernails digging crescents into your thigh through your clothes. In the waning moonlight that filtered through the dusty window over your bed, his pale eyeshine snared you like roots bursting from somewhere within your busy sheets to keep you there—keep you tame. "That's right. Come to me. Come to me."

There was a new drowsiness behind your eyes, one you couldn't stave by blinking. Montague's face was closer now, and you were struck with just how beautiful he actually was. The longer your gaze lasted, tips of your fingers exploring every shape and edge of his exquisite features, the less you were convinced he was a threat to you—that he couldn't have possibly been all that you'd feared up until now.

"I want you." His lips inched up like he expected you to say it. He felt your hands rest on the sides of his face, guiding him down into a soft kiss that he returned, that he kept clean and let you command until he was bored with it. You chased after him, lower lip pulled between both of yours and eventually out of reach. "Don't you want me too?"

"I wish you could understand just how much I do." He rummaged his pocket for the gold compact, losing it somewhere in the sheets, and then busied himself with stripping himself and you of clothes. Each piece discarded showed a greater expanse of your skin, a delight in his eyes because he could see that gorgeous webbing of arteries and veins throughout you, even in the darkness, through every defense your body created to protect you from every bacteria, virus, infection—from him.

He didn't need the breath, but he took one and held it anyway. You withered against his touch, those freezing, lithe fingertips traveling down all the areas where he wished his teeth could be, clear down to your groin. His smile stretched, feeling you search eagerly for a fistful of his hair with his lips smoothing across your inner thigh and then going higher.

There was warmth between your legs, a colorless glisten that leaked out onto the thin sheets, darkening a spot on them that tempted his tongue out for a taste. He came close to entertaining the notion of giving you that glimpse of heaven, allured by your hips leaping off the mattress and against his face.

"You really do think this is all about you." Montague kept you still by pressing down into your abdomen as he rose onto his knees, erection fitting tight between your bodies in the moments before he guided himself lower and hitched up into you. The sharp motion knocked a startled gasp out of your throat, where it quickly dissolved into a slew of filth and breathy panting. Your nails clawed into your palms, a sight he thought to make worse by digging himself deeper into you.

Montague had no issues biding his time this way, looming over the sprawl of your body beneath him, manipulating parts of you until he saw your face flinch and the first moans of discomfort shake all the way from your chest, up, and through your teeth. They matched the pace of his hard thrusts, smothered by sharp slaps of skin that carried in the inky air.

Indeed, I can wait. That thought of his unsatiated hunger melted in the back of his mind with the precedence of arranging the course of blood in your body. The drum of your heartbeat was deafening to him, but it wasn't enough. It wasn't loud enough. He wanted to be able to envision the arteries and veins bursting in his teeth, saturating the sheets and walls and both your bodies in hot red. He wanted it to paint his skin while he fucked you to absolution.

"It really, truly, is all about you in the end, isn't it?" He could still speak clearly, despite you being unable to utter noise beyond the air being forced out of your lungs. "You really are magnificent. How could I ever think to let you go? Not after everything you've done for me, how beautiful you look next to all of my things."

His hand shifted away from your abdomen at last, tracking across the soft span of your stomach and the muscles spasming there under his fingertips. All he would have to do is dig through you a little bit, and he could bury himself in those twitching fibers and insides. But he continued on his path to your pert nipples that he rolled against his palm a few times, higher still to fold his fingers together against your sternum where he felt your heart thundering there against your ribs.

"Thump. Thump. Thump. Thump," came his mocking chant that cracked into raspy moans as he lingered there. It had been a long time since something had made him feel this good. He had forgotten what bliss was truly like.

He reached your neck before long, trapping the underside of your jaw against his knuckles, forcing you to see him as his weight bore down on your throat. You both heard the cartilage and muscle in your neck shift, a subtle crack that sent your limbs flailing. You were thrown out of the rhythm of his thrusts in an attempt to grab at him.

"You really are despicable, aren't you?" He let out a gleeful laugh, letting your fingers turn ashen while you wrung his wrist. You weren't able to do much with your legs except use them to plant your heels into the mattress, vaulting your hips in the air to try to wrench yourself free. His cock slipped out of you, but he was hardly bothered by that. "Does it feel good that you chased off my guest? I could get him back, you know. You're aware of this. I know you are. But righteousness just feels so… rewarding, doesn't it? You couldn't resist. Desperation must've been eating you alive."

Strings of saliva glistened in your mouth, breaking apart the further your jaws spread. You were convinced, in that moment, that you would die like that in a silent scream. None of the words that Montague spoke truly reached you, not as your chest quivered and lungs burned as though swallowed in an inferno.

"Every misdeed in life vastly outweighs the good, you know? The scales have never been leaned in our favor—not I, and especially not for you. If that's the sort of thing you believe in. Isn't that what you're taught? Goodness for the sake of salvation at the end of a short life of inhibitions? How miserable." Montague took his hand off of you and let you breathe. You sucked in crisp air, gasping from your side through wet coughs and the sourness of vomit spat out on the floor.

Your respite was brief, weight on the mattress shifting as the hair on your scalp was used to lever you to your knees, body suspended upright only by his fingers tangled at your roots.

"This is all I can see." Montague loosened his hand from your head, moving south along your spine to your ass. He kneaded the bruised parts of your hips for a while after, lips ghosting their way along your neck up to the ear. "All I can see is what's right in front of me. And how it tastes. All that matters is that I have my fill—and that I feel good."

He smeared slick into the heel of his palm, rolling the head of his cock in that mess as he instructed you with every bit of lewdness how he wanted you to bend against the headboard, how far apart for you to spread your legs for him.

Every bit of it was humiliating for you, while he wished he could memorialize that moment of sinking back inside of you as your breaths broke into stifled sobs, face warped by anguish.

"Does it hurt? Tell me, I have to know, what does it feel like?" He enjoyed the suspense of not receiving an answer, listening as your fingernails dug tracks into the wood headboard and the dark room filled with obscene wetness that grew louder as his thrusts turned wild.

"Mmm—" He hinged forward, bracing his weight on top of your hands with his own. You shied from the surge of coolness that came with his cheek pressing yours. "You and I aren't so different. It makes me wonder if you actually like this. Isn't there something so freeing about it?"

"Mer—mercy, please." It was a coarse whisper from your dry throat, so much of your time having been spent with your mouth agape. The idea of having you that way was as tantalizing as all the others he thought up. "Montague, please—mercy."

Oh, now you were begging.

This was more than what he deserved. He managed a few more thrusts, spilling over into you by the third with a moan that he felt no shame to leave ringing in your ear. "Every part of you, every single part—I'll burn myself into your skin and your bones. You'll feel me in your veins, your blood. I'll make for certain that I'm all you remember—forever."

The vastness of your bedroom had grown warmer, permeated with the thickness of sweat and salt that left your palms slick against the headboard. You let your body slump against it, skin sticking to the wood. It didn't offer you the relief you wanted at that moment: a glass of ice water, all the tenderness of a soft bed to lull you into a blank dream—you just wanted to rest.

Montague knew this just as well, fishing his compact out from a muddled heap of linens and clothes. He checked inside to grab one of the two cigarettes left, making a mental note he'd need to replenish again tomorrow before lighting it and savoring it. At this rate, he anticipated he'd be empty before the end of the night.

For a while, he sat there cushioned on his haunches, admiring the way the smoke coiled towards the ceiling in dainty wisps and mingled with the stench of sex.

"It's not enough." he said, barely eliciting more than a glance from you. His current cigarette was already burnt to the filter, forcing him to pull the last and light that one too. "This is my last one. Such a shame."

You smelled the smoke strongly now, just seconds passing before you were yanked across the bed onto your back, the soreness in your scalp near excruciating as you yelped. Montague made a place for himself between your thighs again, leering down the length of his nose at you.

If he wanted to, he could trace the dread etched in your features with a finger, feeling all along your hot skin, into all the cavernous lines he wished he could preserve—right there, just like that. There had never been a more gorgeous visage than the one you wore right now. Only your gleaming, glowing, pink insides were more beautiful.

He watched your lips twitch while he teased a fistful of his hard cock against your sorest spot. You were swollen and bruised, and he could only imagine what it felt like when he bottomed out in you again.

The curve of your spine arched off the mattress, fingers frantically raking the air at him, reaching for any part you could sink into to get him out. Even your body seemed determined for the same, wonderfully stimulating walls squeezing around him.

It made a shiver roll all along his spine to his tailbone, eyes rolling up towards the ceiling, with his first thrusts feeling positively divine. Especially when you jolted, an almost exaggerated response amplified by jagged cries and wet gasps you couldn't seem to swallow back down into your chest.

"I'm sorry, I'm sorry—" You sputtered around the mucus piled in your throat. "Montague, I'm sorry. Please, stop."

He had burned away half of his last cigarette when he leaned over you, his body eclipsing what poor light had managed to illuminate the room for you. You could only follow the dainty mesmerizing glow that worked away from his mouth—his exhale barely masking a moan that he blew away with the smoke—and towards you.

"Keep doing it." His other hand was crawling up your neck, forcing you to suck in a hard breath. "Beg me again. Keep doing it."

All sound but the steady pulse of the headboard striking the wall had deadened, lasting well until the moment the cigarette touched your skin—and you screamed. Your throat vibrated, suddenly stopping when his palm closed around you again, silencing all your noise, his thrusts sloppy and rough while you thrashed under him.

This time, he kept you pinned by his chest, letting your feet dig for traction and slip and slide on the sheets. The bright smolder turned dark as he twisted it into your neck, taking all the remnants of restraint he had not to drill into you as far as it could go. He curled his tongue behind his jaws, keeping them tight.

Montague let go of your throat to allow you the grace of a stifled wail before that same hand sealed your lips. "Ah, ah. You know better than to scream. Shh, shhh, shhh. It's such an ugly sound."

He rubbed the cigarette into your skin until it crumpled, leaving him to lament for a moment once flicking it away to the floor. For him, it left behind a beautiful burn: raw, mad, red, and enticing. As his hand fell off of your mouth, daring you to do more than whimper and cry, his tongue was already flat against your wound.

"Oh, God," you wheezed, voice hoarse and jarring with the force of his hips knocking into you. "I'm sorry. I'm so sorry! Stop, stop, stop! I swear I'll never do it again! I swear. I swear!"

Montague caught the wrist you swung at his head, giving the taste of your seared flesh time to settle on his palate before turning towards the pulse in your thumb. He tried to match how he was fucking you out to how it throbbed on his lips.

"Oh, I'm well aware that you won't do it again. That much is a given." His strokes into you were suddenly languid and intentional, so achingly deep that your eyes rolled back. "I've already said that you're forgiven, haven't I?"

You could barely speak over the depth he reached. It didn't feel right. "Th-then, why?"

A smile flourished across his face, but your eyes couldn't pierce that dark veil to see it. You could feel the damp path he left on your wrist, how the muscle writhed all around the sprawl of your veins, going as far as to wind your fingertips before it receded back behind his lips.

"Because I'm enjoying myself." There was a weight of finality to those words before his mouth engulfed the side of your wrist, away from your fragile network of bluish-purplish channels. And when he bit into you, it was the incisors that sank through.

You didn't know what it was. A clamp seized you by the neck like his fist, steeling itself there and robbing you of a scream. The pain was unlike anything else—paralyzing and deep, like a pair of sharpened, narrow skewers made of molten fire piercing you with such an agonizing ache that you could do nothing but lay there.

But you still felt everything he was doing. His thrusts had grown truly vicious, chasing a high that came as the warmth of your blood seeped from a pair of punctures he had created. The steady flow he fed from was something he lapped on at his leisure. Enough of it streaked the length of your arm and dripped onto your bedding, onto your naked, warm skin when he guided the fall over your neck and chest, south to your stomach and abdomen. He let it fill and pool the seams of his fingers while smearing it with the fluids between your bodies.

At last, breaking the trance to speak, feebly, in between intermittent pockets of pain and numbness rolling through you, you asked with some hopefulness, "Are you going to kill me?"

"You? Kill you?" Montague dropped your wrist. It felt like a limp, dead thing that didn't belong to you. He dove at your neck for those drops he teased himself with, nudging your chin high with his nose to reach it all. "Death would mean letting you go. You're all mine, darling. Whatever other existence waits beyond death will never have you."

His tongue wet a trail to your chin, collecting a watery essence of blood and spit that he pushed into your mouth. Your lips were sealed by his ravenous kiss, relenting to the thickness of his tongue swirling the taste into your cheeks and down your throat, a nauseating intermix of iron and stale smoke that lingered and made you pucker.

And then, you heard him back in your ear, craning his neck only as far as to aggravate the cigarette burn with his breath. It gave several angry throbs. The weight of his body was almost flush on you, spreading the blood around as though your skin together was a single canvas.

To his eyes, it bloomed breathtakingly, seeping into every crevice, pore, and scratch that made up your design, an impermanent stain that he could saturate you in again and again and again. The things he whispered in your ear were vile and wicked, all on unlabored breaths while his strokes turned sluggish and stayed seated deep inside you until the final hitch of his hips left you full of him.

"I don't think you should go to work today."

You were only scarcely coherent of him—or anything for that matter—eyes unmoving from the black void above and unfeeling of how he chose to manipulate your body, still, hours later. All you could think about was the flutter of your lashes weighing down heavily over your eyes and how this world only survived on suffering such as yours.

༺ ♰ ༻

A small pile of things was arranged fussily in a duffle bag Hoss had given the day you returned to work after an impromptu leave of absence. It had only lasted three days, just enough time to acclimate to the pain that seemed to synchronize to every part of your body, throbbing everywhere, all at once, and at times with sharpness so great it toppled you to the ground. You could only lay there—wherever you dropped, on whatever cold slab of marble or concrete until it dissipated, unfurling from your limbs and organs to a rapturous wave of relief that melted the tension out of you.

It had only happened once while at work on a scene amidst a balmy summer night and came out of nowhere like an electric shock surging to your fingertips and toes, a hammer landing on your bones and leveling you on the sidewalk leading back to the company van. And that was all it took to incur a ruinous sort of anger in the two hulking men.

"You're going to take this bag, pack some shit, and you're leaving. Tonight." Hoss had to shake out the dust on the old duffle bag he pulled from somewhere in his car. "You ain't gonna tell me the reason, but I know he did something to you. T.J.'s calling in a favor."

"No. Don't—don't do anything. Don't try to come to the house—" There was a bandage around your wrist that you couldn't stop fiddling with. "I don't know what'll happen if you do. Just fucking don't."

"Nah, not us." T.J. slapped his phone back into the clip on his belt loop, eyeing the motions of your fingers on your wrist uneasily. "One of my old buddies—name's Roscoe—said he wants to handle it. Apparently, he and your guy have a history of some kind. He says to be ready to go by three."

The meaning behind what he said was left nebulous and concerning to you, even after you returned home with the duffle bag and started pulling things from your closet. Some ways across your room, high up on the wall and out of your reach was a clock. Its monotonous ticking brought your eyes over to it.

It was just after one-thirty, still enough time to change your mind if you wanted to. There was something so effortlessly easy about following along to the whims of other people. It felt safe, reassuring—their confidence was infallible. Not once in four years had T.J. or Hoss given you a reason to doubt their intentions, but right now, it boiled over in your mind.

But where will I go? What am I going to do? He'll find me. He'll find me. Montague would find you, but he wouldn't stop you from leaving. You could see it with clarity—him perched on the armrest of a chair, watching you walk through the door. He'd give you a headstart, a few days, maybe a few weeks.

You weren't sure you knew what to do without him. There was nowhere else in the world you could go, no one you could confide in that wouldn't be destroyed. He would keep your heart beating all the while breaking you apart until he had his fill, reminding you that this was how it was meant to be. This was how he showed you how you belonged.

And you—silly little you with your consciousness floating on the fringes of inscrutable ecstasy and some personal purgatory built on agony in your bones and blood—would believe him.

"Going on a trip?" His voice drifted to you from the doorway, far sweeter than it usually was. "I wish you would've told me. I can't imagine what it'll be like without you here in this house. You breathe life into it."

He was lured over by your silence, fitting his fingers between your shoulder blades to push along your spine, easing away the discomfort that had settled there. It was hard not to lean into that relief, a misstep that shattered any lasting hold of willpower when he stooped his neck to sweep you into a kiss.

"Why don't you stay instead?" He knew you wouldn't be coming back, not without dragging you back himself. "Stay with me instead. Right here. In this bed."

"Montague, stop—" He pressed down harder on your lips so those words withered into guttural frustration in your throat.

The duffle bag was flung far away, opening space on your bed for him to lay you out and begin to unravel the bandages around your wrist. Once he had access, his mouth was already full against the two puncture sites.

"Stay." He wasn't playing coy now. "I'll take care of you. It wasn't enough before. I can see that now. What can I do? It'd be too easy to break your legs. What if I chained you to this bed? What if I locked you up in this room? I wouldn't mind keeping you downstairs with me, but it would be too cold for you, I think."

"I want to leave." you said, mustering your composure through tight lips while he teased the infected purple holes with his flatter teeth. "Let me go."

He smiled derisively. "I don't think you know what you want."

"I—" You balked at him, reiterating with a stumble, "I—I just want to leave. Get off."

"How will you ever survive without me?" You didn't know if you'd be able to. "You'll be all alone, all alone in a world that's just ready to tear you open and spit you back out. I've told you before: Society doesn't reward virtue over vice—only those who play along. You won't last, not after you've known and tasted me."

You couldn't bring yourself to say anything, whereas he swelled like a man who had salvaged a victory, lying himself down to kiss you again—

And then, the doorbell rang with an immense melancholic echo that you could feel vibrate up your arms and legs. Nearly a year later, you were hearing it for the first time and grasping onto the lapels of his suit vest, keeping him still when you remembered T.J.'s promise.

"Ignore it." you said.

"We have a guest—" Something in his tone made your stomach clench. "It's not polite to leave them waiting, especially at this hour."

Montague had untangled himself from you and was gone before you could stop him. Another wave of pain put you on the floor when you moved. Drool piled from your mouth. An ache so unreal pounded in the wrist he had played with. The crawl to your duffle bag was far, arduous in that every inch felt like carrying stones on your back.

I'm going to die. I might as well already be dead. You didn't have any more time to wait, so you slung the strap over your shoulder and used the wall to guide you along the quiet hallway, bumping into every pedestal and display where Montague's most treasured things had stayed undisturbed.

You were one of them, something he could keep on the second floor with the rest of his stuff, but unlike brittle porcelain and fraying embroidery—he could break you as much as he wanted, again and again and again, and fit you back whole. He could do it forever while you wasted, longing for an end he would never give you.

But as you crept along the bleak wallpaper and all of his curios, you were so gentle with them, steadying any wobbling base or piece as you went. The central staircase was close, voices at the bottom of it faint and unintelligible, drifting alongside you as though part of the house—

The air exploded. Just once. A single gunshot brought back all the alertness to your body, neck and shoulders at full length, pain dulled to where you could shuffle faster and look off the bannister at the landing below.

Montague was staring back up at you from the floor, entirely still and soundless. His jaw was unhinged, askew, frozen in a position that should've been impossible. A black hole gaped between his eyes, but didn't bleed.

"If you're not ready, that's going to be bad news." Another man stood nearby sheathing a gun, unfamiliar and yet with sameness in the way his gaze felt hollow and reached through you. "I'm repaying my debts. I'd like to make good on this one."

You were slow descending the stairs, even slower while you rounded Montague's body and denied yourself the chance to stop. Something invisible wanted to pull you to him, plow your knees into hard marble and weep over his chest. However, your insides bending in disgust and twinges in your bones kept you onward.

This man, Roscoe, was just as sickly-seeming and gray as the other, every slot of space on his arms and neck filled with images of religious iconography and portraits of saints—Mary being the only one you recognized with just a glance. It was tempting to touch him, something he noticed and stepped out of your reach.

"Is there another way out of here?" He made a weak motion towards the front door just ajar, but his eyes were stuck on the wrist wounded and unusable to you now. "We need to go. Now."

You were racking your brain for an answer, turning half-circles in place before pointing to the archway with a clock. "There's a backdoor, but the yard is fenced in and there's nothing but forest for three miles. There's also—"

Roscoe waited expectantly, ushering you to continue when he went for the gun in its holster. "Start moving, we'll figure it out." He unloaded another round into Montague's head, a near indecipherable twitch in the fingers made the hair on your neck shoot straight out. "Silver only keeps him down. It won't kill him. Go!"

"Th—there's, there's the basement." You smacked your lips, trying to swallow around a bulge in your throat. "There's an old door. He said there are tunnels, but I don't know where they go. I don't know if he was telling the truth. I don't—"

He threw a hand into your back, thrusting you forward at least three feet. You almost didn't catch your footing. "Then that's where we're going."

"Not a friend of yours then, I assume, darling?" Montague's voice from the floor was as much of a relief as it was terrible. The silent gaps of air all around were disturbed by sharp snaps and cracking bones as his jaw moved back into place and he sat upright over his thighs. You were transfixed by the silver bullets being sucked into his skull, holes shrinking until they closed completely. "I'm not surprised you're still fraternizing with the wrong crowds, Roscoe. You and that entire Society have always been a fucking eyesore."

Roscoe readied his aim. "Parasite."

Montague laughed all the way to his feet, tugging at the edge of his vest to make it neat again. He opened his mouth just enough to let his tongue roll out, shards of silver bullets tinkling as they hit marble underfoot. "You can't take what's mine."

He looked to you, stepping closer every time Roscoe moved you back with his arm. "Come here. Come back to me, darling. This is where you belong. This is your home. You belong here with me, here with everything that you know."

"He doesn't mean that." Another gunshot snapped you to attention, blinking out of a stupor you hadn't realized you were in. The bullet landed in Montague's forehead, teetering his balance in such a way that his back curved towards the floor, arms hanging like useless instruments, yet he still somehow kept his soles planted. "Time to go. Get to the basement."

Roscoe didn't fail to reach you this time, running tight on your heels through the house to the basement floor. He stopped partway to the old door to help you scour the duffle bag for a key—one attached to the chatelaine Montague had given you the day you accepted to move in.

Your breaths were ragged, heart ablaze and beating against your ribs. In that moment, as you flipped through the assortment of keys with an unsteady, slippery grip, you wondered if Montague heard your blood racing in your veins, if he could follow the suffocating drumbeat your heart made in your ears.

Just above, fast approaching the locked basement door, came a thunderous roar so inhuman and reverberating that it scared the clip of keys out of your hands into a clattering heap on the floor. Time was up.

"Move!" Roscoe shoved you aside, illuminated by the hectic flare of your phone as he fit his fingers through a gap in the door and ripped the entire thing off its hinges. He pulled you by the scruff of your shirt and heaved you inside the tunnel. "Go! Go! Go!"

The first thing to hit you was a putrid smell intimately known but always through protective equipment and a respirator. And as you went deeper into the tunnel, led by a single route and the light off your phone, the dirt packed under your feet turned soft, sinking to the tops of your shoes.

And then, you saw bodies.

Numerous—countless corpses in varying stages of decay with twisted faces reflected your terror and pain right back at you. Most were intact with missing limbs or dark red chasms in their abdomens that had been scraped hollow and dry under the white light. A few had been fully decapitated, briefly reminding you of the dead blonde woman from that night, but most of what lay stacked against the tunnel walls were emaciated figures with skin pulled so taut to their bones you could still make out their faces.

You were doubled over your knees, sucking in fetid mouthfuls of air and retching them back out on the ground. It burned in your throat, in your nostrils, and behind your eyes, but stifled your sobs as Roscoe dragged you alongside him.

"What did he do? What did he do?" You were crying, wheezing out those words on every shallow breath you took all the way to an end just ahead. The more you thought about it, the more you smelled the rot, tasted the bitterness of your own vomit, the more came out. "I don't want to die! I don't want to die!"

Roscoe had to let you rest in the grass once you both surfaced. One of the exits turned out to be near the house, less than half a mile. But the tunnels kept going and so did the bodies. You suspected that there wouldn't be any reach of that underground labyrinth that didn't have some form of decay along it.

The thought brought the tears back, but now you could relish the sticky summer night humidity and touch dewy tendrils of grass under your hands.

"Can you drive?" Roscoe had a pair of keys hanging from his index finger, giving you a long moment to take them. He saw confusion in your watery stare. "I'll tell you where to go, just drive."

That's how it had been for hours at this point. You kept your hands locked around the steering wheel, one stronger than the other, gnawing the inside of your cheek while ruminating everything—tonight, the night Montague had bitten you, every other night before that, and your decision to have ever trusted him.

"How long ago did he bite you?" Roscoe had the seat reclined, arms over his eyes to shield them from oncoming headlights. "It doesn't look good."

You tested your grip on the steering wheel, but you couldn't do much without a sharp sting in your wrist. "I don't know—a couple weeks ago? I've tried everything short of going to the emergency room."

"That won't help," he said. "Modern medicine can fix a dog bite, antibiotics can kill an infection, a vaccine can protect you from a virus. Those aren't going to do any good."

Solemnly, you asked, "Am I going to die?"

Roscoe didn't sit up but had your wrist in his hands, turning it in little ways that didn't aggravate you. Besides the occasional glare from passing vehicles, there was no light in the car, and the holes in your skin were hardly distinguishable, though they had gotten darker. You weren't able to move it with any ease now.

"What you need to know right now is that he's never going to stop following you." He put your hand back on the steering wheel, careful as he enclosed your fingers around it. "It doesn't matter how long it takes, what you do, where you go—a parasite finds a host, and it latches on. And it doesn't let go."

You glanced between him and the road several times, tongue wetting the dry parts of your lips. "He's a vampire—you're a vampire. There's got to be something—"

Roscoe finally sat up in his seat, now cramped sideways with his shoulders flat to the window. The car veered a bit into the other lane. "You need to understand something. What you're saying would imply he ever had any humanity. Vampires are created." He paused for a beat, waiting for the realization to strike you. "Montague was never created."

"What—what the hell is he, then?" A horn abruptly blared by, prompting you to yank the car back onto the correct side. "He drinks blood. He has teeth. He—he hunts. He doesn't like silver. His eyes are the same as yours."

Roscoe lowered his gaze, but remained in that uncomfortable position. "There's a story I heard about him once. I don't remember the details except for one: ‘If the devil exists, they're one in the same.’"

You kept your eyes on the road, counting every car that flitted on past. They were probably going to work at this hour—green numbers on the dashboard showed it just after four—and they'd be able to have a place to return to at the end of the day. Now, you didn't belong anywhere, and twenty-four hours from now you still wouldn't.

The town where you had lived with Montague for a year was long behind you, backtracking would take hours, and you wouldn't know how to get back from the direction that Roscoe had told you to go. Dim streetlamps and cozy houses with spruced yards had morphed into an endless network of concrete, signs, and off-ramps to places you'd never heard of.

It was scary how everything could change in one night, and how it did. The only semblance of normalcy to you right now were the aches throughout your body, which had returned the moment you fully comprehended that you had escaped that house.

"Why…" Roscoe looked up at you, seeing your lips shake and eyes turn red. "Why do I want to go back to him?"

He fixed himself right in the seat, tousling a hand through his hair while looking out through the windshield. "You shouldn't do that. But you'll never be able to stop running."

You never saw Roscoe again once the car ride ended several thousands of miles later, mentioning something about how he repaid his debt to T.J. and had disappeared from a restaurant you both walked into. When that happened, you sat paralyzed at your little table for most of the day with a soul-crushing realization that you were truly alone with nobody in the world—just like Montague said you would be. And, for the sake of others, you'd never be able to have anyone else in your world.

It stayed that way for close to two years. The hardest part hadn't been the homelessness or constant vigilance, not the door revolving each person to come into your life since, but the fact that you still yearned for what you once had. Everything so awful about what you experienced sometimes looked like heaven when you thought about it, like soft, cloudy nostalgia from a time where the throes of agony were all you had ever known.

You were capable of thinking soberly as well, and with that came the understanding that a part of you would always want that time back—want him back. He had left you with a permanent scar and neurological damage that could never be corrected. It was anticipated you'd lose that wrist at some point in the future, but for now, you could still hold a cup and brush your teeth with enough conscious effort.

The pain never went away either, but you refused to let it impede your work in the field. And your two roommates were a couple of engineering geniuses who'd managed to make the flat more accommodating to your needs. They'd been patient with you during every step of your transition into a new life, calling you an enigma because you had nothing to your name except a dusty duffle bag and a "strange-looking dog bite" on your wrist when you first met them.

Sometimes, especially on the weekends after clinking together enough shot glasses, they tried to probe your brain for some clue as to who you were, who you had been historically. You had decided it was better that they—that no one—knew about it or what actually existed out there in the world.

And when you returned home from the lab late that Saturday night, you were surprised to find the lights off and the flat immersed in the kind of soundlessness that made your ears feel clogged with cotton.

You were slow in lowering your backpack to the floor, keeping the front door slightly ajar so a slither of light from the residential corridor slipped inside. "Jordan? Felix?"

No answer. You didn't hear anything from their bedrooms upstairs either.

"Jordan?" The nearest light switch didn't work, neither did the one after that, or any others you hunted down with the diffused beam from your phone screen. "Jordan? Felix? Are you guys home?"

It was possible they had gone out somewhere for the night and just hadn't mentioned anything to you, as unsound as that logic actually was, considering it simply wasn't their personality. But as you wandered through different rooms checking the switches, you knew you were rationalizing to keep yourself in check.

The light from the hallway still piled inside like a narrow pillar, raising all the hairs on your neck and arms, knowing that it wasn't a building-wide outage. They had never left you in a situation like this before. Something was wrong.

"Jordan! Felix! Whe—" Your foot nearly shot out from under you when you slid through something slick on the laminate. After a moment to fix yourself, bracing the edge of the countertop with a clammy palm, you steadied the white glow of your phone at the floor.

There, glistening back at you, was the vast richness of blood in a tall puddle that spread like long winding tendrils through grout in the flooring. It looked almost black under your light at a certain angle, estimating it had been there for several hours—untouched.

You held in a breath and grit your jaws together as the more you moved, the more you saw. And when the top of a head came into view, silky hair shining like fine thread before clumping together at the base where the blood had pooled the most, it was everything you could to keep yourself from hitting the floor.

Both of them were there, perfectly out of sight of the front door and completely unrecognizable. Their bodies had been left in one piece, though where their faces had once been were cavernous holes with pale, pink ribbons of flesh and fat left behind. The roundness of their skulls let blood fill inside it like a vessel. What little pieces of brain matter remained had floated to the surface.

You staggered back from them, phone loosening from your weak hand and returning them to the maw of darkness, while groping the wall behind you as far as your arm could reach. This wasn't a result of crude knife work or even bludgeoning; no, it was a slow kill, one meant to steep someone in torment so immense that you prayed to whatever was out there that they succumbed immediately.

"Help…" Your voice was trapped in your throat, barely registering as a whisper even to yourself as you sidled along the wall. "Someone—anyone, please help."

The patter of your heartbeat was torturous. Your every step back to the entrance was leaden with fear. You couldn't get your legs to move fast enough, and the light reaching in through the gap seemed to stretch on forever—further, further, and further still.

You thought back to that day you met Montague and shook his hand, noting how unnaturally cold it had been despite it being a nice day in spring. You remembered the dead blonde woman with mascara tears, and the bodies he used to decorate the tunnels, and the young man who was able to walk away that night believing it was all some shallow quarrel—never knowing he had sealed your fate.

You regretted all of it.

The door was in your reach now, and you could get out, call for help, and go back to running. This time, you wouldn't be tricked into false satiety or let anyone too close. You would see mountains and forests and oceans a thousand times over before you stopped again.

Two years hadn't been enough time for you to accumulate many things, you thought. It wouldn't be hard to leave most of it behind, just like you had before. You would unpack that old duffle bag from the back of your closet, fill it to the brink, and that would be enough.

You had your hand over smooth metal, but that cold reached greater depths in you as the door was pushed shut from behind, light shrinking away through the slot until you were swallowed whole in the dark.

"Hello, darling. I've missed you." He sounded the same against your ear. For a split second, you felt relieved. "Don't worry about cleaning up. We're not staying long."

He clamped damp fingers over your mouth before you could scream.