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[haggle]

( her body still knows he's home. one of those undeniable facts you never forget: sky is blue, grass is green, and jake seresin is the only place that's ever been strong enough to hold her up. safe walls, quiet place, a solid foundation she could finally trust to carry all her heaviness. a man who built love the way others build houses: stupid, stubborn, sturdy. brick by impossible brick, promise by impossible promise. so she opens her legs wider to him, like she always did, always has, always will; petals apart with slick, shameless ease — warm, welcoming, wet. clenching down on his finger, her cunt, greedy, bossy, soaked with need: don't you dare fucking leave me again.

it hurts, a little. not because of jake — because her body jolts where he's pressed his mouth to the aching bruise of what she's become. months of skinned knees, trying to outrun the ghost of him in someone else's bed. weeks of begging for it to hurt just to drown out the echo of his name in her head. nights spread wide for mouths that never kissed her right, just spat her out when they were satisfied. never asked her where it hurts; never tried to make it better, only worse.

it tears a gasp from her, sharp and wanting. the whole of her sensitive, sore, starved, shuddering up to meet him like she might just come from the warmth of his breath alone. like she's waited decades for him to come back and kiss it better. feels longer still when his tongue drags a devastating line up her slit — too hot, too slow, too fucking much.

she shakes through it, the wobble of something strong threatening collapse. it's not polished or practiced; not costumed or choreographed like she's been for the others, only worth keeping around when the performance stays pretty. only willing herself to stay when they didn't ask for anything real. her spine bows, tight with tension; toes dig into the carpet, her other heel landing uselessly between his shoulder blades, sliding down his back in a restless stutter. hips squirming with a need to run from what feels too good, too raw, too ruining. )

God. ( a sobbing keen of a moan, done with all the hiding. ani's eyes prickle from the intensity. ) I fucking missed you.

( easy enough, to think she might just be talking about the sex, not how he fucking devours her even — especially — when she's mean, messy, mouthy. not how she knows, now, she's starred in his thoughts as much as he's haunted hers. not how his mouth between her legs always sounds like an i love you. her hand fumbles down to her hip, grasps at the back of his fingers. less desperate to come than to be chosen.

softer, ragged. safer to sigh, because his mouth is too full to answer fast: ) I thought you'd never come back.

[ailerons]

[ For a moment — one where he's knuckle deep inside of her, mouth laving hotly over her cunt, heavy lidded eyes angling up the roam of her body to watch the way her spine tenses and shakes and bows — he thinks of the skies. He looks at her and something tugs urgently inside of his chest. The same, limitless promise. Open and a wonder. Endless. Weightless. Like he can do anything, in the place where he belongs.

It feels so disorientingly familiar that he groans, heavy and dark and low, right against her. His fingers at her hip turn, clench; the thick band of his digits knits tightly against hers, curling so harshly that it's as if Jake is trying to anchor her there, between dirt and atmosphere, by something as ordinary as touch alone. He mouths over her folds, and the messy crease of her thigh, and his finger hammers into her with soft, slick fucks. Muscle memory that his body never unlearned, for the way she likes to come. The way she is when she wants more. The way her hips roll so hard that he uses his hand, the one that's folded into hers, to move an arm across her hips, baring her flat and down and close as he drags his tongue across her clit over and over again.

Keeping her there with a different kind of strength. An iron-bar promise. Stay. Stay still. Stay still for me, and we'll build this all over again, anywhere you want. Anywhere you ask.

I'm always going to come back for you. I'll never be late again.

There. Close. Almost. Always. There's no real force on earth that can promise any of those things like they're non-negotiables. Jake Seresin, acting like doubt isn't ever in his DNA, even when it was. (What the hell is wrong with you. Why didn't you write me. What did I do wrong. I thought you'd never come back.) She flutters and clenches and he pushes in another finger without warning, a coax and call, and when she comes he doesn't stop until it has to edge something that aches.

And then he's the one who bears all the urgency, too good and too raw and too ruining. Pupils blown and jaw shiny and thumbing open his jeans, his zipper, bowing back up and catching her mouth with his own full of her taste, the force of a shudder rolling down his back as he barely stills. ]

Ani—

[ Helpless. Right there, hook and line, target and bullseye, heart and home. He kisses her all over again, pushing the taste of her further inside, his own movements suddenly turning clumsy and fever-hot, spinning recklessly into the hairpin turn. ]

[haggle]

( panic from a thief — in any room beyond this one, it's an unforgivable crime. makes him sloppy, makes his tells too loud, makes the greed a fucking neon sign lit up in his eyes. ani smooths back the wild strand of hair haloing his temple, smooth southern charm sandpapered to rough grit. his usual calm glide through life's storms, untouchable — all man-made turbulence against her, now. she's not the place a man sticks an easy landing; she's the up-draft. lifts a man up, tears him down, on a whim of nature. the only one that can ever have him like this — golden, godly icarus singed by a girl who burns brighter and bolder, nosediving down into the dirt. made real, made raw. made hers, like nothing else has ever been hers.

she knows that look of desperation. knows she's wearing it now, pupils blown wide, swallowing the warm whiskey‑brown. knows she's worn it, with deja-vu clarity — reflected back to her in the glittering face of diamonds, blue glow of an atm screen, eyes that looked at her without seeing. people who were never hers, lives that she'd never get to have. the times she's drawn up short: that's not for you, ani. never for you. and the one time she'd thought, maybe, maybe that unbelievable daydream was finally hers —

jake kisses her with the same split-open longing, like she's always wanted to be kissed: not just worth wanting, keeping, but vital. precious, priceless. she whines, loud, into his mouth, wrecked by the intensity of him; drags her tongue, wet and messy, to catch the salt-sweet taste of her sugared to his teeth. spit threads between them, sticky gum still tucked behind her molars; it gets lost and caught up between their tongues, slick and saliva and spearmint, a sting of nicotine. so dizzyingly nostalgic she can only gasp, )

Jake.

( call and response. here, it says. i'm right here. you're home. look at me, look at me. a hand cups his jawline to hold it steady, licking clean the evidence of her orgasm on his skin. snags her nails in his shirt with scrambling impatience, an annoyed, pissed-off breath at finding any barrier still exists to separate them. flexes her thighs tight around his hips, taking out the frustration on his denim, the obscene drip of her darkening the fabric, a monet watercolor that's all ani's frantic, hip-arching brushstrokes. and when the blunt head of his cock catches on her clit, slips down to nudge her open perfectly —

she clenches down so violently she can only curl forward, sink her teeth into his lip to hide the high, broken sound it breaks loose in her. ragged and reedy against his mouth, like he isn't already jet fuel burning up, another match to light him up: )

You feel that? That's what missin' you did to me. ( she's never known how to beg out loud. learned real fast that it never changed a damn thing for her. still, it sounds like a plea, the please locked in her throat, when she grips at his fucking stupid, perfect hair: ) This pussy's been waiting for you, baby. You gonna stay where you belong this time?

[ailerons]

[ Her nails catch and claw. His aren't far behind, an easy bend to something as simple as her annoyed exhale, minute and passing and still held as precious. Jake rears up just enough for distance, just enough to tug his henley over his shoulders, off, strewn aside, hard muscles pulling and rolling with the tension and release. Underneath, his body wears the distance more: the up-close view of harsher times, physicality wrought out of monotonous routine. The same fuzz of his chest hair, the same broad cut of his body — nothing anew, save a small, puncture-mark of a healed scar at his side. It's funny, the kind of things you end up owing. How much, how far, to who— ]

Fuck.

[ Inelegance and rip-roar need, pressed out between a hiss or a grunt or some other hungry noise. Undone, unspun, by the easy slip of her body against his. All those years, fought for with a blinding smile, and he unravels, for her. Jake shakes his head as if it'll clear it, the haze and bolt of all of it, even though her fingers strain into his hair and grip him tight. ] Yeah. Yeah, [ like he knows it. Like he's saying Yes. all over again, too pulled apart not to be honest. As if it's his first goddamn go around. Yes. I do. I do, I know, I know. In this frame, in this light, everyone plays for keeps.

Blunt pressure bears down. Inch by inch, slick and wet and messy and tight as his cock presses inside. Something about him stills even then, careful and sure, continuous and full until he's sunk to the hilt. He groans and resettles his weight, hitches a broad palm under her thigh to hook her knee over his shoulder. Partly folding her in half, chest to chest, forehead pressed to her temple. Deeper. Closer. The rasp of his cheek against the sticky swell of her mouth. His ring-banded hand, bruise-tight at her hip.

He doesn't move. Not immediately, not then. He stays inside her, spearing her open, swallowing both of their shudders in a kiss.

The flash of teeth in the stall of a shower. Her back slipping along the tile. It feels right even if it sits askew, and Jake's hips grind hopelessly, a shallow mimic of a thrust that's uncontrolled and desperate and raw. It spurs him into motion, the long drag back and the harsh thrust in, a brutal snap of his hips. Hoarsely murmurs, ]

You feel so fucking good.

[ He fucks her into the floor with a groan. Strong and heavy and the hard plane of his weight stretched out over her body, rhythm slow and sinuous and deep until the last, harsh jolt at every crest. ]

Gonna stay right here. [ His touch travels upward. From the curve of her hip and the flutter of her ribcage and up still, further, until he's braced over her with an elbow, fingers twisted clumsily into her hair. The green of his irises, blown into glitter-dust flecks, as he looks right at the woman he loves. ] You taking me like this. Fill you up as many times as you want it.

[haggle]

( when was the last time anyone called her good? the bigger question: when was the last time someone said it and meant it as more than a play? (the biggest question of all: when was the last time she didn't let them take from her anyway, let them call her sweetheart and baby while she closed her eyes and pretended they all felt the same, fucked the same, wanted her the same?) not like jake, who says you feel so fucking good like being inside of her again is goddamn biblical. looks straight into her, and suddenly ani exists as the sun at the center of his orbit, blotting everything else around her into black.

a soft palm cups his jaw, possessive against the grit of his stubble. presses herself in — breath to breath, nose to nose, forehead to forehead, too needy to share the scope of his attention with anything but her. she flutters, impossibly tighter, impossibly wetter. drips slow and filthy where he's buried deep, leaking past his cock to pool into the carpet beneath them, gone by how that word — good — burns, lights up her nerve-endings worse than any cherry-red cigarette sting pressed too long to the skin. it sounds obscenely slick when he fucks back into her, hungry punctuation on her need. )

Oh. Shit. ( a punch of surprise through her ribs, a ricocheting gasp that darts out of her swollen, kiss-bloomed mouth and crashes into his. typical fucking jake seresin still unlocking new secrets in the corners of her body, even the ones ani didn't know existed, a scavenger's hunt for what sparkles in the dark. a pull of her teeth nibbles her lip, eyes sliding to the thick stretch of him swallowed by the shine of her cunt — perfect proof he was real, he was here. another breath, huskier: ) You look so fucking good inside me.

( he always did infect her with that gorgeous greed of his. because it's not enough to be good; it's only enough if he forgets every other place he's been but her, always his last safehouse, always curled around the ghost of him in her bed. it's only enough if he fucks her like he's forgiving her for every time she forgot who she is — ani mikheeva, who fights and claws for everything. ani mikheeva, who forgot how to fight and claw for him, who wears the cost of giving up like a bruise on the inside of her ribs.

her nails score down his bicep, red lines like she's tallying every thrust, every day without him. her other ankle drapes on his shoulder, despite the vulnerability in the position — folded up beneath him completely, trusting him with all of her soft parts she's spent months armoring. it shifts him deeper on his next stroke forward, the tease of his absence — the chase of him slamming home like a rhythmic promise, right into that fucking sweet spot that's always made her thighs vibrate like a body straining against g-force: i told you i'll always come back.

ani whimpers, hot and open, into his mouth — high, gutted, sounds she's only ever made for him — strobe lights in her vision, clit sparking where the hard planes of him grind against her. meets him with a desperate tilt of her pelvis, in an answer: i've always been yours to come back to. )

Yeah. You're gonna take care of me. You promised. ( an old, unforgotten vow. she tilts her head, mouths at the muscle of his forearm where it brackets her. a demand that won't settle for less — until it shakes like the rest of her, reassurance she hates needing: ) You gonna come in me, baby? Make up for every fuckin' night you left me empty?