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The seasons are changing.
Somewhere along the line, spring has fallen straight into the arms of autumn. Even now, safely tucked away in your living room, you can feel the beginnings of the pervasive chill that will encompass all the days leading up to the bitter harshness of winter. Outside, the erstwhile green grass is blanketed with the crimson, auburn, and yellow evidence of fall. The wind lashes out every now and then, dashing the leaves against your window in some half-hearted effort to remind you that change is, inevitably, upon you.
There are still some things that remain the same, however.
You tip the wine glass to your lips and let the sultry, silky feel of merlot slip down your throat. It’s a spicy, full-bodied variation from California—one of your favorites. And, as it turns out, it is just the thing you need to break through the terrible weight of stress that remains stubbornly on your shoulders. Lesson plans, meetings, and the overall chaos of being a high school teacher has its moments of glory, to be sure, but there are certainly days like this where you want nothing more than to forget all of that for a little while.
You turn the page of your book, wine glass still clutched in one hand while the other drifts toward your lap. The book, a slightly battered and annotated copy of The Collected Works of Evelyn Miller, sits propped on the arm of the couch.
Arthur Morgan’s head is in your lap. He holds up your well-worn copy of Dracula as he takes a sip from his own glass of wine, one that contains significantly less merlot than yours.
He’s never liked it. Even now, you can just make out the frown that accompanies each sip. But Arthur likes to indulge you, to experience the same things you do, though he is always one impossible step outside the boundaries of human experience.
Mostly because he isn’t human. Not anymore.
You let your eyes drift from the page as your fingers slide through the swept back strands of his hair. He’s handsome; more than that, you think as you lose yourself in the steady, furrowed brow concentration of his reading. His summer eyes slide across the pages, devouring each of the words with studious intent.
You smirk. “Are you trying to be ironic, Arthur, or is this entirely by accident?”
He flips the page. “Hm?”
You reach out and tap the book.
Arthur lays the tome flat on his chest and tilts his head up to look at you.
Those eyes.
The gold-rimmed swirls of bluest green bore into your decidedly muddied, dark ones. At first, it’d been difficult to explain the feeling that came over you each time you felt his gaze slide to you. Now, you know precisely what it is—it’s the feeling of a lock sliding into its keyhole, the sense of completion at the height of perfection.
“Bunch of bullshit is what it is,” he mumbles in his western drawl as he frowns at the cover. He tosses the book carelessly onto the coffee table and settles back into the nest formed by your folded legs.
You continue to tug your fingers through his hair, barely brushing his scalp as you go. Arthur closes his eyes and lets out a soft, contented sigh.
“So,” you say softly after a moment. “You mean Bram Stoker got vampires all wrong, then?”
One eye opens and trains on you; that same thrill sweeps through you as it always does, igniting your core without a second’s hesitation.
Arthur folds his hands on his broad chest. “Tragically,” he laments in response.
You brush your fingers along the ridge of his brow and glance over at your book. “And how does he compare to Evelyn Miller?”
Arthur lets out a long, tired sigh. Miller is a part of your school’s curriculum, though you’ve never really counted yourself among the number of loyal fans of his work. Despite this, you still need to cover American Eden with your sophomore classes, and who better to assist in the planning than a man who’d known Miller personally?
“He was always a favorite of Dutch’s,” Arthur begins, the words wistful and far away. You notice his voice hitch with the barest hint of pain and lingering anger at the sound of his former gang leader’s name. Arthur shifts on the couch and goes silent for a moment.
It isn’t often that he talks about Dutch and the rest of the van der Linde gang. Most of the schools in the area cover westward expansion in their American History courses, including brief mentions of the gangs that tore through what had once been the Wild West.
Dutch van der Linde and Colm O’Driscoll usually head the top of the list.
You give Arthur a minute as he collects the myriad memories that will never stopping haunting him. Finally, he shrugs and says, “He was always going on about Miller, quoting his books and telling us how brilliant his writing was.”
He takes a moment and scratches his chin with his thumb. “I never cared for the man. Helped him a bit in Saint Denis, with the Natives, but he weren’t exactly the man Dutch made him out to be.”
You pull your hand away and pick up the book by the corner, as though it has suddenly become repulsive and unappealing.
“And yet,” you say as you toss it on the table beside Dracula, “I’m still forced to teach the youth of America about him.”
Arthur’s hand wraps around your wrist. You look down at him in surprise as he tugs it back to lay on top of his head with a distinct sense of finality.
You roll your eyes and resume massaging his head. He’s never said it aloud before, but you’re sure that it’s one of the few ways in which Arthur manages to find solace. Really, it’s just an excuse for you to touch him.
Little does he know there is never a moment of the day in which you are not silently begging, aching, to touch him. You’d grown up believing all the stories about vampires: long nails; stone-cold skin; brooding, emotionless demeanors. But Arthur is so vastly different; even immortal, he still seems so vibrantly alive, a part of the world in a way that most people can only hope to be tethered to it. After all, he’s seen the best—and absolute worst—of humanity, over the course of more time than you can even begin to contemplate.
And Arthur isn’t cold, you acknowledge for the thousandth time as your hand slips away from his hair to cup his cheek. He’s not warm—not exactly—but neither is he cold. But sometimes, after he feeds, you think you can detect just the barest hint of heat when you touch him.
As a rule, Arthur only feeds on animals. It isn’t much different than the hunting he used to do, or so he says. He’d only ever fed on humans after he’d been newly made, when his sire had left him on the mountaintop to carve out his vastly new and different existence on his own. There had only been one time in recent years (recent being a somewhat relative term to Arthur) that he’d fed on a human, and he still refuses to talk about it.
Your hand traces an affectionate path along his jaw and back up to his brow. Arthur keeps his eyes closed as you lean forward and press your lips to his.
It’s a gentle kiss, despite the heat that claws at your center. When you pull away, you see that Arthur’s eyes are already open and staring at you, the blue centers smoldering like the hottest fire.
Your lips lift into a daring smile.
Arthur sits up and turns so that he’s facing you full on. He moves a bit closer to you, his body angled in just such a way that you are sure that if you don’t kiss him, he will make sure you do.
You shouldn’t want this as badly as you do. You should be terrified, numbed with fear, but all you can think about is how badly you need Arthur to quench the roaring, raging fire that simply won’t let you rest.
Arthur isn’t human. He’s already told you he has difficulty controlling himself around you, but all that seems to fade away the longer he looks at you. His eyes aren’t sharp like bladed knives, the way a predator might view his prey; instead, they are watching you with intention, with the same forbidden desire that pervades your very soul.
One moment, you’re separated by only a few inches. The next moment, your arms around his neck and your mouth firmly pressed to his.
Arthur pulls you into his lap. You straddle him as your lips move against his. Your fingers slip through his hair, holding him tight as his hands land heavily on your hips.
His tenacity matches yours as you deepen the kiss. You smile when you hear him let out a low, feral groan as his hands slide to your backside and take firm hold of your ass.
You instinctively grind your hips into his. There is still too much space between your bodies, the inches feeling more cavernous than you can bear. Your body aches as you shift forward until your chest presses against his. There is too much distance, too much fabric, between the both of you, and you can’t bear the thought for a moment longer.
You pull away and breathe in a gasp of much-needed air. Without hesitation, your hands slip to his waistline and tug at the hem of his t-shirt. Your hips rock against his as you slip your hands beneath his shirt, splaying your palms against the carved muscle of his abdomen.
Arthur moans as his hands tighten on your ass. He pulls you tightly against him, his tongue dancing with yours, and you can barely manage the hint of a smirk as you feel the evidence of his longing press up against you.
This is about the time he usually stops you.
But he hasn’t yet, and you are emboldened by it. It is all the invitation you need to unlatch his belt and undo the button on his jeans. You let out an eager sigh against his lips as your fingers brush against the considerable bulge straining against the denim.
You’re just about to work on the zipper when his hands clasp your wrists and pull them away.
Arthur quickly detaches his lips from yours and levels a hard, unyielding gaze at you. Despite the lack of necessity, you can see the way his chest heaves with memory, as though the moments you just shared had indeed left him breathless.
“Y/N,” he says, the sound of his voice hardly more than a low, guttural growl in the back of his throat. It sends shivers down your spine and you strain against his hold in an effort to bridge the space between your bodies.
But Arthur keeps you away, holding you tightly enough to make his point clear but not enough to hurt you. He would never hurt you. You can tell what he’s about to say is difficult for him. He looks away for a moment, sets his jaw, and turns back to you.
“If we do this,” he begins slowly, deliberately, then sighs and stars anew. “You know what it means if we do this.”
You catch your breath and focus long enough to nod. Arthur’s explained this to you before; what you want from him means more to his kind than just another notch in the belt. This doesn’t end when the night slips away and the dawn banishes the lingering memories of a night spent together.
This is forever.
Finally, you wriggle your hands from his grasp and drape your arms around his neck, keeping just enough space between the both of you to look him square in the face.
“I know what it means,” you say with conviction.
Arthur shakes his head and his hands roam to your sides. He holds you tightly, wanting to keep you close but ready to pull you away if you so much as show a single sign of hesitation.
“If we do this,” he says again, his voice a bit steadier this time, “then you belong to me.”
You let your fingers dance idly at the back of his neck. “I already belong to you.”
His hands tighten their grip on your sides. “Woman,” he growls and, while the sound should undoubtedly be terrifying, it is enough to make you heady with desire.
“This ain’t a goddamn fairy tale,” he counters roughly. “You’ll belong to me—not to yourself, not to this world, not to anyone else, ever. Wherever you go, I go; whatever you do, I do. It ain’t just gonna be you no more.”
You cup his face in your hands and meet his gaze. “I’m already yours.”
Of course you are; you knew from the moment you met him that there was no going back, no path forward that didn’t have Arthur Morgan in it.
“I can’t give you what you want,” he whispers, but the fight is going out of him.
You answer decisively, “You are what I want. Nothing—no one—else.”
He’s relenting now—you can see it in the way his eyes soften just a bit, feel it in the way his hands inevitably drop to your hips. You shift forward until you are once more straddling his lap, his bulge pressed firmly against your abdomen. You trace your fingers along his cheeks to the edge of his jaw and back down his chest, until he juts his hips up to meet yours. Your fingers work once more at the zipper of his jeans.
His fingers slip beneath your sweater and his hands, still rough and calloused from his past, slide up your back. You press your forehead to his and let out a soft, eager moan as you finally manage to get a hold of yourself long enough to slide the zipper free.
Your eyes flit momentarily downward. Your feel your stomach coil with anticipation as you take in just how well-endowed he is.
Arthur pulls you toward him, until you’re nearly crushed against his chest. He pulls off your sweater in one fell swoop, leaving you only in your bra and leggings.
Then he kisses you, and it’s like the rest of the world has crumbled to ash.
His lips move urgently, desperately against yours as his hands reach up and deftly undo the clasp on your bra. Your hands claw at his jeans, urging him to pull them off. He moans against your mouth as you palm his hardened cock through the taut fabric of his underwear.
Suddenly, you hear the sound of ripping, tearing fabric. You pull away long enough to notice that you are no longer wearing your leggings. Instead, they are pooled on the floor in a mess of destroyed fabric.
Arthur pulls you back to him, his touch possessive and insistent. His eyes glint with the barest hint of amusement; he is not at all sorry he ripped your clothes. He’s much stronger than the average man, and they were in the way, after all.
You smirk as he pulls his shirt over his head. He is made of carved muscle, his skin rippling over the taut sinew as he tugs his jeans down his hips just enough to free himself.
For a moment, you wonder if you’ll be able to take all of him in. Then his hands ease your hips up and toward him.
He kisses you softly when you’re poised above him. “Are you sure?”
You don’t answer; instead, you brace your hands on his shoulders and lower yourself onto him.
Arthur wraps his arms around you as you sink lower and lower, wincing slightly as you adjust to his size. He lets out a low, throaty groan as his mouth claims yours, effectively stealing your breath.
He fills every inch of you; the lower you let your hips fall, the more the feeling makes you feel dizzy with desperation. Before you have a moment to fully appreciate it, Arthur thrusts up into you, unable to hold back any longer.
You gasp and dig your fingers into his shoulders. You thought you knew what it would feel like to share this with him, but this far exceeds even your wildest expectations.
He holds you tightly as you begin to ride him, keeping your pace slow. One of his hands slips between you to cup your breast. He brushes his thumb lazily against the taut bud at its center as you let out a high, tight moan.
You kiss him. You need the taste of him as much as you need the feel of him deep inside you. Sooner than you think, the slow pace isn’t enough for the both of you; Arthur instinctively matches his thrusts to the sway of your hips, until you feel the tip of his cock brush against your elusive, cherished spot.
The next moments are stolen by his mouth, his hands, his thrusts. He holds you close, impossibly close, as he swallows every single one of your moans, as though the very sound of them makes him thirsty for more. He feels cold against your skin, but you know it’s only because yours is damp with sweat. He picks up his pace and you don’t think you can take anymore of him in than you already have, but he seems intent on proving you wrong. His hands hold your hips in place as he crashes into you, making you cry out for more, more, more.
Sooner than you’d like, each hard, eager thrust makes your stomach tighten. You can feel your edge looming as you kiss him, silently begging him not to stop. Arthur breaks away from your lips and you mewl softly, wrapping your arms tightly around his neck as relentlessly pounds into you.
He presses a chaste, tentative kiss on your neck, where your pulse races with the intensity of your passion. You both know what comes next and, now that you feel your climax clawing through you, you want nothing more than for Arthur do it. You look at him as he fucks you. The gold in his eyes seems brighter, more fluid, and you barely manage to say what’s on your mind.
“You’re mine,” you moan as you arch your back and let him in deeper.
Arthur’s eyes widen a fraction. His hand grips the back of your neck and you feel it coming, that sweet, blissful relief.
He kisses your neck again as he thrusts into you, hard and fast and unrelenting. You hold tightly to him and you let out a long, aching moan as your belly floods with heat.
Arthur bites your neck, hard enough to puncture the vein, and you come undone around him.
A hoarse, sharp cry escapes you as you wrap your arms around his neck. He growls as his hips stagger once, twice, and he follows you over the edge. Pleasure roils through you even as he takes your blood from your neck.
Arthur’s fingers dig into your flesh as you finally settle, limp and exhausted, against him. Your pulse pounds in your ears as he drinks from you, his lips warm and tight against your neck. Your breathing becomes slower, heavier, as your life spills into him, but you don’t care.
He is yours, and you are his, and nothing will ever change that.
It’s only when your vision starts to blacken at the edges that you begin to think matters might have slipped slightly out of your control. You paw at him and he growls, holding you tighter until there is nothing but the feeling of him against every inch of your body.
Finally, Arthur pulls away. His chest heaves as he sucks in a needless breath. He blinks as though he is slowly coming back to himself and leaving the feral, primal urge for blood behind. His lips are just barely stained with red. You notice that that, for perhaps the first time since you discovered what he was, his cheeks are painted with the slightest hue of pink—because of you.
You cup his face and kiss him, tasting your own blood as the bond between you settles and takes root. He is yours and you are his; your world begins and ends with that unbreakable tether, and nothing will ever change that.