Archive of Our Own ^beta

You’re fast, but he’s faster.

You’re moving as quickly as you can through the alleyway, but it’s futile. He’s not far behind, and he’s closing the gap quickly. You’re already hitting your limit, suffocating on your own shallow breaths. Frantic gulp after gulp of thick, polluted air. Everything on your body is burning. If it weren’t for the adrenaline, your legs would’ve already given out. 

Each time you look back over your shoulder, he’s closer. He’s tall; his strides are long, and he’s covering ground fast. It’s only a matter of time before he catches up. In a panicked glance backward, you see the blur of the Dominator in his hand.

You’re lucky you’ve even made it this far with him in pursuit.

If he’d had a clean shot, you’re sure he would have blown a hole clean through you with the Dominator by now. But this alleyway is littered with things that act as cover, things that you have to leap over and crash through. For once, you’re grateful for all of this detritus: bags of trash in piles taller than you, rusting heaps of scrap metal that cut through your skin as you sprint past. 

This alleyway is just like any other around here, full of refuse left by the callous inhabitants of this town.

They’re people just like you. Thieves, murderers, criminals of all kinds. People who have escaped the Sibyl System one way or another and fled here, to the capital of vice. Here, where the eyes of Sibyl don’t reach, criminals take a twisted kind of refuge among one another. It’s a den of immorality: a massive city where crime is far too high and too frequent to monitor. 

And so, lacking the manpower to handle a city full of latent criminals, Sibyl has turned a blind eye and left this lawless land to its own devices. There are no scanners here, no agents to enforce laws. Here, you sleep with one eye open — and in return, you commit your crimes with no retribution.

It’s a hellish sanctuary. No Sibyl, no Public Safety Bureau, no Inspectors, and no Enforcers.

Except, apparently, for him.

You have no idea what an Enforcer is even doing in this town, or how he’d stumbled across you back there. But he’d caught you red-handed. You’d been lucky to make a break for it right before the Dominator had blown a you-sized hole into the already-crumbling wall you’d been standing in front of just a second before. You’d had half a mind to dive for your gun before you ran, but he’d already taken aim at you with the Dominator again. So you’d bolted out the door instead, and a moment later the chase had begun.

And now, unarmed, outmatched, and pursued by this man with clear intent to kill, you’re well and truly screwed.

There’s no way you’ll be able to lose him. He’s just too fast. Even for someone so tall, he’s lithe, and he’s able to navigate the crowded alleyway maybe even better than you can. You won’t stand a chance unless you can slow him down somehow.

As you sprint past several dumpsters overflowing with trash, that somehow comes into view up ahead. Several tall, rusting, flimsy scrap metal shelves line the alleyway in front of you. Some on the left, some on the right. On their shelves rest debris and deteriorating spare parts, long abandoned.

You yank at them with all the force you can muster as you dash through, toppling several on the left and several on the right. They come crashing down behind you; loud clanging echoes through the alleyway as the metal falls, blocking off the path of your pursuer.

When you look backward, you’re relieved to find the narrow space of the alleyway completely barred. The shelves are too tall to lay flat, so they’ve blocked it off diagonally in both directions, forming a massive X shape. The contents of the shelves have fallen into the space beneath them, preventing anything from coming through. If the Enforcer had gotten any ideas about crawling, he’s out of luck.

This should buy you some time. You pick up your speed, furthering the gap. Maybe you’ll even make a clean break, if the people currently swearing down at you from their apartment windows don’t decide to give chase too. But he’s the greater evil right now, and you’re relieved to have cut him off in his tracks.

The relief lasts only for a moment. Your heart drops into your stomach on the next glance backward. Because he’s coming into view again, bounding onto a tall pile of debris, launching himself from it and onto the top of a dumpster. And then he’s catching up again, sprinting on top of the dumpsters, darting from one to the next as he approaches the fallen shelving.

What the fuck are they feeding these people at the Bureau?

You look forward just in time to sidestep a huge pile of garbage, just narrowly missing it. If you’re lucky, the shelving might still be enough to block him off; there’s some space between the last dumpster and the first shelf. There’s no way he can jump over all of them, even if he has a running start.

Wishful thinking. The next time you look back, he’s already taking a running jump. But you’re mortified to find that, rather than attempting the impossible task of jumping over the shelving, he’s launching himself upward . High enough to grab onto the platform of a fire escape and hoist himself up onto it.

There are two fire escapes in this alleyway, and they’re conveniently placed. For him, at least. Just a few feet apart — one at the end of the first building, the other at the beginning of the next. They’re high up on the brick. They run the length of the wall above the fallen shelving.

He bounds over the first escape, then leaps onto the second, easily bypassing all the obstacles you’d set for him below.

You will your aching legs to move faster. You’d underestimated just how outmatched you are. Now that you’ve seen just how fast he is, how agile, and now that you can hear the clanging of his footsteps on the metal of the fire escape approaching at a terrifying rate, reality is setting in.

There’s no use trying to outrun him. Clearly, you won’t be able to lose him.

You look back again, panicked. He jumps down from the fire escape, hits the ground running — so close you can see the grit on his face. Then he raises the Dominator in his hand and points the barrel directly at you.

There’s no way you’re going to die looking down the muzzle of that thing . You dart to the side and run with your hands covering your head, ducking and zigzagging as you listen to the nauseating, suspenseful sound of the Dominator powering up before the inevitable blast. 

This asshole’s gonna blow me to fucking bits!

But when the impact comes, it’s surprisingly off. For all his skill, his aim is shit. The massive blast misses you by a couple of feet; it hits a pile of trash that you’d just skirted a moment ago, sending debris flying through the air and raining onto you.

“ Fuck! ”

You can’t delude yourself into thinking you’ll make a clean break. It’s impossible. Sooner or later, he’s going to catch you. Sooner or later, this is going to come down to a fight, and you’re going to have to kill him before he kills you.

You won’t be able to do that without a weapon, though.

You’re defenseless, and he just keeps getting closer. You’re not sure if you’d have a fighting chance against him even with a gun. But death is inevitable if you’re empty handed; if he catches you here, weaponless, you’re dead. 

If you’re going to die, you’d rather die with a gun in your hand. Maybe you can even put a bullet in him before you go out. Take him out with you. Rid the world of one more of the PSB’s mutts. You could call it a favor for all of the other criminals out there.

Or maybe , in the best case scenario, you can even make it out of this alive.

But you need to get to your guns first. You’re lucky that you’d even had enough presence of mind to run in the general direction of your apartment, with him on your tail. You know this alleyway; you’re just a block or so away from your neighborhood. If you can somehow get around the building to your right, you’re home free.

Well, not free. But if you can get home, you can get to that weapon stash of yours — and maybe that’ll level the playing field a tiny bit. 

The question now is how you’re going to make it home in one piece.

If you go on like this — running in a straight line, with him getting closer and closer — one of his shots is guaranteed to hit. Your mind runs through a million frantic scenarios of what that might look like. A host of gory images, a thousand different ways chunks of you might splatter all over the alleyway.

The whir of the Dominator starts again, so alarmingly close this time that you glance down at your body, expecting to watch yourself explode into a million pieces. But when the shot fires, it’s off again — hitting the brick to your right, taking a massive chunk out of it and sending a cloud of dust swirling through the air.

You bolt through the polluted air, feel it catch in your throat, coughing. For a fraction of a second, your watering eyes linger on that hole your pursuer just blasted in the building.

If only there was some way I could get out of this alleyway and through this stupid building.

Up ahead, a door swings outward from the brick on your right, obstructing the alleyway. You grin. The universe — your conspirator, your partner in crime — has given you an out. Or an in .

A disgruntled man walks out of the door, yelling and gesturing wildly at you, but you’re already sprinting past him and through the door he just came out of. Behind you, his cries get more shrill; you’re running too fast to hear what he’s saying, but you know it’s some variant of What the fuck are you doing? or maybe even I’ll kill you! Stuff you’ve heard a million times before, stuff you hear daily around here.

But you figure with the Enforcer hot on your tail, he’ll have something else occupying him in a moment. So you continue to run, clearing the floorspace of the building so quickly you only have a second to take in the dilapidated, filthy interior of this establishment (if it could really be called that) and the suspicious group of men hunched over a table of even more suspicious things, who watch you dart past with quizzical expressions on their faces.

Those men start to shout a few moments after you’ve passed them. A sign that your pursuer has entered the building. There’s a clamoring, several men yelling, and then you hear his voice, strangely level and composed. 

Sit your asses back down or I’m gonna take all of your heads off.

You don’t even bother to look back this time, because you already know they’ll obey. No one around here is prepared to deal with a Dominator, because on any other day, no one around here would have to.The majority of the weapons you can get your hands on here are old. Unregistered, usually unreliable, and always inferior to the System’s technology.

Breathing hard, you burst through the door at the far end of the building and skid into the alleyway, bolting left as soon as your feet catch traction.

It’s a straight shot through the alleyway, and then a right. You look back over your shoulder as you turn the corner, just in time to catch sight of the Enforcer dart out of the building and into the alleyway. 

A split second. You meet his eye for a split second. But a split second is enough.

You see killing intent. A hunger so instinctual and insatiable that you run cold to your core. It’d freeze you completely, stop you in place like a deer in headlights, if there wasn’t already another burst of adrenaline coursing through your veins.

Almost there.

You keep going. Faster. Book it left, through the familiar rusting fence that surrounds the maze of crumbling apartment complexes, yours included near the middle. One building, two, three; they blur past, and the sound of his footsteps echoes on the pavement, growing louder. The echoes bounce off of the buildings, distorting and mixing until you can’t tell where he is. Or how close he is.

Almost there. I’m going to make it. I’m going to—

Panic-stricken, you realize that you have no idea where your keys are. You must have dropped them somewhere along the way. And even if you hadn’t dropped them, you don’t think you’d have time to use them. There’d be no time to unlock the numerous locks on your front door before he’d shoot you dead.

What the fuck do I do?

You have to figure something out quickly. You’re already turning the corner of your building. In this entire maze of apartments, yours is arguably the worst for wear. It can’t really even be called an apartment; it’s long and low, L-shaped. One-story. More like a motel than anything. Which is probably what it once was, before criminals like you took over the city. Now, people inhabit any building that’s any semblance of livable.

You’re suddenly grateful for this building in particular.  You’re grateful that you have no stairs to climb right now, that it’s a straight shot to your place — the apartment that sits right at the junction of the two adjacent wings of the building, your front door nestled in the corner of the L. But—

How the hell do I get in before he shoots me?

You’re closing in, darting past the doors of the people who, in a regular town, you might call your neighbors. But every neighbor here is just a potential enemy. Someone to protect your belongings from. It’s a universal mentality; all the doors you pass on the way to yours are reinforced. 

Some of the windows between them are boarded up, too. But not yours.

Suddenly, a thought occurs to you. A plan.

As you run full speed at your front door, you glance backward once more. There’s a blur of black as he turns the corner. He comes into view already raising the Dominator.

Now, it’s a straight path from him to you. No debris, no obstacles. A range far too close to hope he’ll miss again.

You need to get inside. Get to your weapons. But if you slow down — if you so much as hesitate, even for a fraction of a second — he’ll kill you. And you’ll die right here, outside the door to your apartment, just yards away from your stash of knives and guns..

And so, out of time, and without any other way in, you revisit your options and come up with one.

Your adrenaline is dying out quickly, snuffed out by exhaustion. But it offers you a parting gift: one last burst of speed and energy. You alter your course, just slightly, so you’re running full speed not at your front door, but at the window a foot to the left.

There’s only one option left, and that is —

To jump.

Glass shatters around you. It explodes as you go hurtling through the window of your own apartment, with your body tucked into a ball tight enough to just fit through the frame of the window. You weren’t even sure if you’d fit when you jumped. But you took the chance, because it was the only one left.

And here you are, landing in a pile of jagged glass with a thump and a yelp, springing to your feet almost as soon as you hit the ground. Shards of glass dislodge from your skin and fall to the floor, landing with a soft tink . You only have a moment to process the pain in your limbs before you see his shadow darken the doorway.

One thing’s for sure — there’s no way he’ll fit through that window after you. So you’ve bought yourself a second.

It’s all the time you have to decide where to go next. By the time the whirring of the Dominator starts up again, right outside your front door, you’re already bolting into your bedroom, frantically trying to decide where to lie in wait so you have the greatest advantage.

The blast of the Dominator reverberates through your apartment; there’s a crashing sound as something heavy falls to the floor.

Oh, you prick, you think. Not my fucking door handle.

A loud slam; you wince. The sound of the door hitting the adjacent wall, probably kicked open now that the lock’s blown off. 

Urgency. Panic. You’re running on a frenzied sort of autopilot, a hazy instinct. Of all the guns and knives you have stashed and hidden around this place, your fraught mind can only remember the location of one .

He steps inside. The rotting floorboards of your apartment creak and groan under that first heavy footstep.

Before he can take another, you’re grabbing for the slim knife concealed above the door frame and tucking yourself behind the door to your bedroom, leaving it slightly ajar. 

You press yourself flat against the wall behind the door, taking shallow, silent breaths as you steel yourself for what’s to come. Just waiting to see what fate is coming to meet you.

A strange sound starts near the front door. The scraping of furniture over the floor, maybe.

You sick fuck . 

He’s trapping you. He’s dragging the couch to the front door, blocking it so it stays closed even with the lock blown off. So now that you’re in, you can’t sneak back out. There are windows here, in your bedroom, but they’re all boarded up. You could try to get out, but he’d hear you. You’re stuck.

You could barricade yourself in your room. There are several locks on your bedroom door, but you doubt you’d even have the chance to lock them all before this door would meet the same fate as the last. So you hold your position behind it, hidden and trembling against the wall.

His footsteps continue forward, slow and cautious. You’re a mouse in a trap, and he’s coming to dispose of you.

With the knife clutched tight in your left hand, you glance to the right, at the low dresser just a few feet from you. You’re cursing yourself. In that moment of panic, you’d grabbed the knife above the door. But if your head had been clearer, if you’d been thinking straight, you’d have gone for the gun in the dresser beside you. That was the whole point of coming here.

But now it’s too late. You’re stuck here, hiding behind the open door to your bedroom. You could still move to get the gun, but if you were to move in the slightest —

Another footstep, this time approaching the hallway to your bedroom. The heavy creak of the floorboards as he moves closer. The soft rustling of his clothes as he turns the corner.

If you were to go for the gun — if you were to make so much as the smallest movement on these ancient floors — he’d hear you before you even put yourself in his line of sight.

“You’re hurt, aren’t you?”

His voice rings through the apartment. Clear, but guarded.

It’s bait. He wants you to answer, to give away your location. He still doesn’t know where you are, at least. And even if you don’t have a gun, you do have the element of surprise. You still might make it out alive if you play your cards right. But this is a very dangerous game, and the closer he gets, the more you worry that you’ve been dealt a losing hand.

“Why don’t you come out and play?”

The rotting floors groan louder as he steps down the hallway to your bedroom. Closer. One footstep, and then another, and then he’s just a few paces away from your hiding spot behind the open door. You look to your right again, raking your eyes frantically over the dresser. There’s no hope of getting to the gun in time, but there’s something else there that might give you an advantage over him.

A vase. An old thing — ancient, really — so tired and familiar that your eyes hadn’t even processed it the first time you’d looked at it. It’s too far to reach at this moment, but… 

He’s so close that you can hear his breaths. They’re level. Steady and slow. And that scares you. It makes you feel vulnerable; it makes you feel small , helpless. You’re hyper aware of your own rapid heartbeat, and how it keeps increasing .

Beyond that, through the jagged glass of the open window, you can hear birds chirping. The sound is muted, from back here. It’s mundane , strangely peaceful. It’s so out of place in this tense, empty space that the sound of it is utterly unnerving.

You’re holding your breath, too afraid to inhale for fear that he might hear. He’s right there, after all, right outside the door frame. Just a couple of feet away, hesitating there, waiting to step inside. There’s no way he could know for sure that you’re hidden here. But it’s as if some instinct is telling him that as soon as he steps foot into this room, something is going to happen.

It’s a doglike instinct, a sharp instinct, the kind that Enforcers often have. Just not usually to this extent.

Your heart is pounding so hard it feels like a miracle that he hasn’t heard it. Behind the barrier that the open door provides, you prepare to engage — tightening your left hand on the knife, raising your arm as if to brace it against the door. But you don’t make contact with it yet; for now, you hover your forearm a few inches away from the wood.

“Don’t tell me you’re planning to run again.” His voice is calm, but it’s loud — projected past your hidden form and into the room. He must think you’re hiding somewhere further back.

You take one deep, careful, silent breath in.

“Where else do you have to go?” he says. “It’s a dead end.”

You were just thinking the same. It all ends here, with one of us dead.

And , you think — releasing a slow, measured exhale as his foot comes down on the floorboards in your bedroom, his form finally passing through the frame — it’s not going to be me.

Before he has the chance to step fully through the doorway — as he’s midstep, the point at which his balance is the most tenuous — you throw your full body weight against the back of the door, shoving it outward with all the force you can.

He’s right on the other side of it, and the door, with all your weight behind it, hits him square. The unexpected force sends him staggering to the side, and you take advantage of the split second of confusion, swiping the vase from the dresser. Before he can even regain his balance, you’re already swinging it at him, slamming it directly into the right side of his skull.

The ceramic shatters, expelling a puff of dust; he pitches sideways with blood pouring down the side of his face, stumbling into the tall set of drawers to his left. You’re desperate to get the Dominator away from him. As he tries to recover his footing, with jagged pieces of ceramic crunching under his feet, you slash at his hand with the knife.

The blade catches skin, slices through, and he swears. It’s not deep, but it’s enough to make him lose his grip on the Dominator. You kick it out of reach as soon as it hits the ground; it skids across the floor, disappearing under the bed.

He’s weaponless and bleeding, and you have the advantage. So, before it can go to waste, you go on the offensive, swiping at him aggressively with the blade. He steps backward, raising his arms to block you. The knife catches the sleeve of his coat, slicing through just deep enough to graze the skin. But that’s not enough. You’re trying desperately for an opening, looking for an opportunity to jab at his abdomen — aiming for something vital while you still have the upper hand.

But there is no opening.

You do have the upper hand, don’t you? You should. But it doesn’t feel like it. He’s stunned, injured, and weaponless, but he’s still so fast. You slice through his coat several times, but you’re unable to do any real damage; he’s too slippery, too unpredictable, keeps stepping out of the way, keeps blocking or dodging each new swipe of the blade. The best that comes out of any new attempt is a narrow miss.

You’re only able to put a few rips in his jacket before he somehow gets hold of your wrist, immobilizing the hand you’re holding the knife in. You think you’ve outwitted him then — slackening your grip and dropping the knife the very moment he grabs you, your other hand darting out to catch the handle as it falls through the air. And you slash at him again, with your free hand this time, thinking you’ve got him. But he’s already stepped backward and out of the way, and the tip of the blade just barely grazes the front of his shirt.

He’s too fast; you’re too predictable. So you let your instincts take control. Less thinking, more moving — quickly, forward with the knife, hoping to plunge it into him with your body weight behind you. But his instincts are too sharp; it’s like he can sniff out your intentions a second before they happen. He takes another step backward. Larger, this time, and you stagger forward into the gap. He sidesteps your body, twists his out of the way, and while your arm is outstretched, he brings a big hand down on your shoulder and shoves it downward.

The sudden force deflects the direction of your arm; the knife misses its target by a wide margin, and he gets a grip on your arm, twisting it at an unnatural angle. You yelp, lose your hold on the knife, and watch in dismay as it goes clattering to the floor. And what’s worse,  you’re tangled up in his grasp now, mixed up in a mess of his limbs and yours, blood from his wounded hand smearing onto you. But you shove your elbow into his side before he can really get a grip on you, twisting out of his arms the moment they loosen from the impact.

Free (for the moment, at least), you stumble backward, eyeing him warily as he swipes the knife up from the ground at his feet. It glints in his hand . Just like that. You had the advantage for what felt like a second . And just like that, it’s his again.

You glance around the room frantically. There are weapons stashed all over, but your head is clouded; there are too many options, and you can’t seem to decide which one to go for. And you’re out of time, anyway. He’s already closing the gap with the knife in his hand. The blood on the right side of his face is still wet; thick liquid seeps slowly from the gash there as he drives you backward.

He gestures to you lazily with the blade. “You’ve got some fight in you. Not enough, though.”

You take one step backward, another. He follows, keeps pace, moving forward.

You sneer at him. Mask the panic, crush it down, with disdain and vitriol. “God. I hate dogs like you.”

“Is that right?”

Your heart is pounding. You’re stuck. Caged in, cornered, hunted . By a mutt, of all things.

“You think you’re so different,” you spit. “But you’re just like me. Just a worthless criminal. You, though? You’re a sellout. Working for the System. What a fucking joke. At least I’m free.”

“Free?” He raises his eyebrows. “Free to do what? Rob people? Kill them? Waste away here with all your lowlife friends? Yeah. What a nice little life you’re living. Seems fulfilling.”

The backs of your thighs hit the dresser. The dresser. You would smile if you could, but it’d give it away. This is just where you want to be. Pressed up against the dresser, just inches away from the drawer with the gun you’d so desperately needed just a few moments ago. 

That knife doesn’t seem as dangerous now. And neither does he. Not even when he leans down, moving forward, closer and closer, until your bodies are almost touching. You can feel the heat radiating off of him, smell the sweat and blood on his skin, mixed with something else. Something more acrid.

Something that lingers on his mouth, on his clothes, on his skin. Cigarette smoke.

You knew he was tall; you could tell that from a distance. But now you can feel it. You’re dwarfed. Made small not just by that predatory look on his face, but by the way you can’t even look him in the eye without raising your chin all the way up.

But still, you’re defiant. “Who are you to lecture me about killing people? You’re a killer, too. That comes with the job, right? What’s your body count, Detective ?”

His face twists into a frown. You wonder what part of it got to him. The disobedience? Or maybe it was the nickname: Detective, laced with sarcasm. He doesn’t have any agency; none of Sibyl’s dogs do. He’s nothing but a pawn. The furthest thing from a real detective.

And he knows that; that must be why he has that look on his face. An expression of cold contempt, his eyes picking you apart as he slips a hand into the pocket of his slacks. He digs for something there. Something metallic; you can hear it shifting under the fabric. Handcuffs, you think. And if that’s what he’s going for — if he gets you in cuffs — you’re fucked.

So it’s now or never. Now, while one of his hands is occupied, you move. Sudden and aggressive, a frantic attempt to go for the drawer near your thigh, where the gun is hidden. 

But he’s faster. Like always . A big, rough hand wraps around your wrist before you can even touch the drawer handle; a cry of protest is only halfway out of your mouth when you find yourself whirled around and bent over , your arm twisted behind your back so roughly it makes you writhe in pain.

He’s thwarted you over and over, but this might be the most compromising position of all: bent over the top of the dresser, your wrist pinned to the small of your back, and him leaning over you — his abdomen pressed up against your body, his hot breaths on the back of your neck.

You’re blinking into your own furious, indignant reflection in the clouded, cracked mirror hanging above the dresser. The worst of it isn’t even that cold, wolfish look you can see in the reflection of his face over your shoulder. 

It’s the cool metal of your own blade on your skin — his right hand dwarfing the knife’s handle, holding the sharp edge tightly to your throat.

His left hand — the one pinning your arm against your lower back — squeezes your wrist: a warning. Careful. One slight movement and he could slit your throat, paint this cloudy mirror red with your blood. If he wanted, he could make you watch yourself bleed out. You wonder, with your heart hammering in your chest, if he’s that merciless. 

“What are you, a tryhard?” you taunt. “Are they really paying you enough for all of this?”

You’re sneering at him in the reflection, but the tremor in your voice is unmistakable.

“I’m just following orders,” he says.

How cruel. “Orders? Don’t you have anything better to do than chase poor, helpless women down on the government’s dime? Harassing me all the way home. Is a paycheck really worth all this trouble, Detective?”

“Is it worth it?” He smiles faintly, applying a little more pressure to the knife, so it digs into the skin of your throat. “Sure it is. If it means I can put scum like you in your place, I consider it a privilege.”

“Of course you do. Obedient little dogs live for treats, don’t they?”

If he presses the knife any further into your throat he’ll break the skin. 

“Don’t move,” he says.

You offer him a sardonic smile in the mirror. “Don’t you trust me, big guy?” 

He doesn’t respond, just keeps the knife pressed tight to your throat. But you feel him release your wrist, and you watch in the mirror as he looks downward, digging for the cuffs again. He’s shifted slightly. Maybe to get into a better position to handcuff you. With a thrill, you realize that his face is far too close to the back of your head. 

It’s sloppy. It’s an opening.

As soon as he looks back upward, exposing his face again, you jerk your head back violently. There’s a muted, wet crunch as the back of your skull connects with the cartilage of his nose.

A calculated risk — you’d wagered your life, betting that you’d make enough space between your throat and the blade to prevent him from slitting it before you broke his nose.

It pays off. You spare a second’s glance in the mirror. Just enough time to see the blur of him staggering backward, one hand darting up to his nose, where blood is starting to surge out of his nostrils, thick and dark. You scramble to open the drawer, and you’re right there — fingers on the handle, pulling it open, even seeing the sleek barrel of the gun — and then his hands are on you again, wrenching you —  throwing you , really — away from the dresser empty-handed before slamming the drawer shut.

You stumble backward, nearly losing your footing several feet from the dresser. The space is too wide to go for the gun again, and he’s blocking it off anyway — stepping between you and the dresser with blood streaming from his nose, the knife still held tightly in his hand, and a cruel smile on his face. 

Now you’ve done it. Now you’ve really pissed him off. And your little stunt didn’t even pay off, because you still don’t have a weapon, and there’s no way you’ll get to it now. Not with the way he’s already pushing you away from the dresser and back, to the adjacent wall.

His hand hits the wall a moment after your back does, slamming down right next to your face. You wince; he presses his forearm to the wall and rests his weight there, leering down at you. 

Blood continues to surge out of his nose, running down his lips — collecting there until his tongue darts out to clean it off.

“You’re such a snake,” he spits.

“What do you expect from a lowlife ? Shouldn’t you know better? Or are you just shit at your job?”

He grins. It’s a wild grin, unhinged, baring teeth which are tinged red with his own blood.

The blade glints when he brings the back of his hand up to wipe up the mess under his nose. Another rush surges out, but he’s still looking down at his hand, studying the blood smeared thickly there. 

He clicks his tongue. “Look what you’ve done.”

If looks could kill, he wouldn’t even need that knife. You’d already be dead at his feet.

You want to shrink away from his gaze, but he holds it, molding his hips against you. He pushes your body back with his. Into the ungiving surface. The blade meets your throat again, pressed into the skin until you can feel your pulse racing wildly under its sharp edge. You try to swallow, but your mouth has gone dry.

“Ah. Looks like you got me.”

The fear strangles your voice, makes it come out small. But you’re still putting up a front. Because there’s something about that look on his face — the intrigue in his eyes — that makes you think this front is the only reason you’re still alive.

“Looks like it.”

The bleeding won’t stop; it just keeps going and going. And now that he’s this close, leaning over you with his body pressed against yours, those dark red droplets drip on your chest, splattering onto your shirt.

You can’t breathe. Maybe it’s the fear, or maybe it’s the pressure of the knife on your throat. There’s no room ; the back of your skull is flush against the wall, and the knife is digging into your jugular. You can’t move, wouldn’t dare to even try, because you keep your knives so sharp that even trembling would get you cut.

Caged against the wall, with your own weapon at your throat, and no way out. No means of escape, no means of defense, and him towering over you, hungry enough to eat you alive. Things couldn’t possibly be worse.

“So what are you gonna do now, Detective?” you taunt. “Are you gonna kill an unarmed woman who poses no threat?”

His bloodstained lips curve up. “No threat? You know what your Psycho Pass is? 392.”

“And what’s yours?” you challenge.

“That doesn’t matter. I’m on the right side of the law.”

You scoff. “What’s another person’s blood on your hands if it’s for the sake of the law, right?”

“Right,” he says caustically. “And for the sake of the law, I always listen to the Dominator.”

“What kind of sweet nothings did the Dominator whisper in your ear?”

He laughs drily. “It told me to eliminate you. Lethal force.”

“How predictable of a dog like you. You can’t even think for yourself. It’s sad.”

“You really want to know what I think?” he sneers. “I think you’re nothing but a parasite. A drain on this society. You’re on borrowed time. I should kill you right now.”

“But you haven’t.” He’s had so many chances to slit your throat, but he hasn’t. If he was going to kill you anytime soon, he’d have done it by now. 

In the silence, you press. “Why is that, Detective?”

The reason doesn’t really matter to you. All that matters is buying time. If you can think of some way out while he takes his time playing whatever game he’s playing, you might still make it out of this ordeal alive.

He doesn’t give you a reason. Doesn’t even give you the courtesy of an answer. He just studies you coolly, and in the silence, the tension expands until it feels like it could pop . The heat between your bodies grows more intense, or maybe you just become more aware of it.

His eyes flit downward for a fraction of a second, to your chest, before settling back on your face. And in this suffocating proximity — with his body on yours, with his hips pinning you to the wall — you swear you can feel something stiffening in his slacks.

So that’s the reason.

You suppress a grin. You sick fuck, you think, for the second time today. 

If that sensation is what you think it is, there’s a way out. You don’t have a weapon, but you have something better. Something he won’t be able to resist, something that’ll buy you enough time to figure out what to do next.

You reach out to his abdomen. Slow, careful, so your movements don’t alarm him.

“What do you think you’re doing?” he demands.

You rest both of your hands on his stomach, smiling. “ Relax, Detective.”

His gaze bores into you. Cruel, analytical, and close. He watches every movement: your fingers lingering on his abdomen — feeling the warmth, the firm ridges of his stomach under his shirt — and then trailing downward slowly.

There’s a strange curiosity on his face. Piqued interest: a shark smelling blood in the water. He’s entertaining you. After all, what threat do you pose to him like this — backed against the wall, with a knife to your throat?

So you push your luck.

“Oh, don’t tell me…” — you tease in a scolding tone, moving your hands further and further down, toward that firmness you feel pressed up against you — “...don’t tell me that now you have me all alone …”  

He shouldn’t be entertaining you. If he were smart — if he were a real detective, if he put those sharp instincts to good use — he’d have slit your throat back when he had you bent over in front of the mirror. But he’s sloppy. Nowhere near cautious enough for a job like this, dealing with people like you. And you know why that is. You know what he wants; it’s so obvious. The evidence is right there — his dick stiffening against your body, getting harder the further down your fingers move.

It’s only a matter of time until he gives in. Until he drops his guard completely.

“Now that you have me all compromised like this, where no one’s gonna find us…” 

Your fingers brush down his slacks, catching that protrusion in the fabric. The hard outline of his cock.

You’d feign shock just to be a tease, but you don’t have to fake it; your mouth drops open a little as you force your hand in the tight space between your bodies to feel out the shape of him through the fabric. He’s so big, fully stiff, rock hard under your palm. You squeeze his dick through his slacks; your own breaths pick up with his, and your pulse quickens under the blade as you look up at him, wide-eyed.

His face is so cold, but it’s hot between his legs; the heat there grows — the friction — as you start to rub your hand slowly over the hard bulge pressed up against his thigh.

You’re struggling to keep your own composure. But you keep that teasing smile plastered on your face even as the heat starts to bloom between your thighs, even as a rush of wetness dampens your panties.

Temptation runs high. The carnal urge to find out what his cock feels like when it’s free from the confines of his slacks. You want him inside you; you want to taste the blood on his tongue while he plunges his dick in and out of you. You want him to fuck you like the dog he is. And you’re giving yourself up to that urge, retaining only the most tenuous grasp on your objective as you run your palm over his dick.

“Don’t tell me you’re planning to take advantage of me before you kill me, Detective,” you pout breathily.

The knife on your throat doesn’t falter; he’d have you think he’s unfazed, but you can feel his dick twitching under your fingers.

“You think I don’t know what you’re doing?” he says.

You smile. “But you’re entertaining it, aren’t you? You were hard before I even touched you. You don’t want this?”

He smiles wryly. Just a slight quirk of his blood-covered lips. Private amusement, combining with the cool disdain on his face. He’s still guarded, but there’s a flush starting to bloom on his cheeks, betraying him.

“Who knew fucking criminals was in your job description?” you muse. “Or are they letting their dogs run wild now? Where’s your Inspector? They should really keep you on a leash.”

“And I should cut your throat.”

“Shoulda, woulda, coulda,” you grin. “Still can. So why don’t you?” 

“Maybe I will.” 

But even as he threatens you, he’s adjusting — moving his hips back slightly, so his dick isn’t pressed up against you. So there’s a little more room between the two of you. He’s giving your hands easier access to the full length of his cock. And that makes you even bolder.

“You won’t,” you say. “You want this too bad.”

You squeeze the rigid shape of his dick from the base to the tip, palm the full length a little harder now that you have full access to it. The tremor in his breath is slight. Almost indistinguishable. But it’s there.

“You really think so?”

“I know so.” You know you’re getting too bold, probably provoking him too much, but he’s so close to breaking. You can see it on his face. “When’s the last time you got some? You’re locked up all the time at the Bureau, aren’t you?”

He presses the knife a little harder into the skin of your throat, tilting it slightly this time, so the point of the blade digs into your skin. There’s a pinching feeling; you wince as the tip of the knife breaks the skin. Just a pinprick. And then there’s the sensation of blood streaming down your throat — a thin, warm rivulet.

You’ve struck a nerve, but it’s working exactly as you want it to. The more you provoke him, the further his guard falls. And the further his guard falls, the closer he gets to fucking you. You can see it: he wants to fuck the attitude out of you. His dick throbs in your palm.

So you continue, cooing sarcastically. “It must be so hard for you. Is it hard, being a sellout? Working for the Bureau? That must be so frustrating. So emasculating. Can’t make any of your own decisions. Can’t do anything unless your Inspector approves. Can’t even get any pussy, because you’re locked up when you’re not working, right? Hey, do they even let you jerk off in containment? Is that allowed? Do you think they watch you through the cameras while you’re stroking your dick?”

He sneers. Opens that cut up in your neck a little further. And you smile widely, with blood running down your throat.

“Bet you’ve never gotten any on the clock, have you, Detective?”

“Watch your fucking mouth.”

He’s going to break .

And you’ll keep going until he does. “It’s such a shame. A missed opportunity. Don’t you think?”

You know you’re walking a thin line. Keep your balance, provoke him just enough, and he’ll fuck you. But if you overstep, what happens then?

No risk, no reward. “You want to relieve some of this tension, don’t you?” you whine. “I mean… you’re so hard…”

The metal of his belt clangs as you fumble with it. You’re testing your luck — unbuckling his belt, undoing the button of his slacks — and he’s entertaining you, just barely.

You’re wondering just how much further you can take this — wondering where the balance hangs, and if you can break his composure without overstepping the line — when he suddenly removes the knife from your throat. You’re confused for a moment, watching it rotate quickly in his hand, until it’s clenched in his fist tip-down. A reverse grip, cutting edge in. The kind of grip you’d use to stab someone underneath you.

Your stomach drops. You freeze with your hands still on his belt, thinking, This is it. You were too flippant, too bold, made a fatal misstep walking a tightrope with death waiting below. You’ve misjudged him — crossed the line, overstepped the boundary — and in a moment, he’ll plunge the knife downward, sinking it into you with his weight behind it.

Fuck . You slam your eyes shut right after you see him pull his arm back, awaiting the inevitable sensation of the knife sinking into you: the burst of searing pain, maybe in your throat, maybe your chest, maybe your eye socket —

There’s a dull thunk and you flinch.

Trembling, you open your eyes to find him leering down at you with his hand still wrapped around the handle of the knife. 

Its blade is buried in the drywall just a couple of inches from your face. 

He leaves it where it is, releasing it to press his right palm against the wall next to your shoulder. Wide-eyed, still trembling, and confined in this small space he’s created for you between the wall and his body, you stare upward at him.

It was a threat — a reminder that it’d be that easy for him to kill you. But to you, it was also a confirmation. You were right; he might threaten you, but he’s not going to kill you. Not yet, at least. Not before he fucks you. So, for the moment, you have the upper hand.

“So what exactly do you plan to do with this opportunity ?” he asks coldly.

You prick, you think. I’m going to kill you. I’m going to play your little game. I’ll fuck you until you get sloppy and give me an opening. And then I’m going to kill you.

But you compose yourself. You’re still trembling slightly, but you force the same smile you had before the knife came down, bringing your hands to his zipper again. 

“Let me show you.”

He dips his head down. “Go ahead.”

You unzip his slacks, slowly. His fingers settle on your jaw — calloused, but surprisingly gentle. He turns your head slightly to the side, exposes your neck so he can lower his mouth to it. He lingers there for a moment, his breaths hot on your throat.

You’re slipping your hand into his slacks when you feel his tongue on the base of your neck, slow and wet. He licks upward. Follows the still-wet pathway of those rivulets of blood that had snaked down your throat, until his tongue reaches their source. The little nick in your skin. He licks the wound, tastes it, makes it sting.

He primes you like this: licking blood from your throat, fingers resting lightly on your jaw, until you’re shuddering. And when you start to fall apart, he gives you a little more intensity — sucking on the skin, soft and slow. He sucks at the wound first, pulls fresh blood out of it. And then he moves to the untouched parts of your throat, sucking on one spot and moving to the next when the last starts to ache.

You’ve got your hand down his slacks, but you’re still separated from him by the fabric of his boxers. You’re not going to give him the full sensation — not going to touch him, skin to skin, just yet — because you want him worked up. You want him desperate. You’re willing to bet that the more desperate he is, the more sloppy he’ll be.

So you squeeze and rub his dick through his boxers, feel the damp spot over the tip of it spreading as more precum leaks out. There’s so much heat radiating off of him; it’s so intense right here — pressed tightly between the wall and his firm body, with his hot mouth on your neck — that you’re starting to sweat. Beads of sweat drip down your temples; they roll slowly under your jaw and down your throat, where he licks them from your skin.

You can feel so much of him; how hard his dick is, the way it pulses and twitches in response to your touch. You want it, need it, but this is a waiting game. 

His breaths are starting to pick up, just slightly, as you rub his dick harder through his boxers. You pause every so often to pull on the band and slip your fingers under it. Just to tease.

You bring your free hand up to thread your fingers through his hair. It’s tousled and soft, light. With your other hand, you continue to tease. Over and over, moving in the confines of his slacks, offering him the smallest doses of pleasure: fingers slipping in and out of his boxers, fingertips running down his happy trail until you almost touch the base of his dick. His cock bobs up against your knuckles each time you graze your fingers downward.

“You get off on fucking people you’re supposed to kill?” you ask softly. “You really are a dog, aren’t you?” 

But despite it all, he’s still gentle, still restrained; his mouth is still slow as he sucks on your throat. He’s so much softer than you’d expect, offering only the kind of kiss that makes your skin tingle — the type that’s light enough to leave you wanting.

The ghost of a laugh against your throat. “If I’m a dog, what does that make you?”

Another kiss that makes you shiver. He’s a better tease than you. No matter what the game is, it seems like he’ll always find a way to beat you.

“Something helpless,” you murmur.

“Helpless…” he muses. “That sounds about right.”

You suddenly find your teasing disrupted, find yourself hoisted up, lifted off the ground and pressed up against the wall, with his big hands splayed out under your thighs and your legs wrapped loosely around his waist. His face is in your neck again, and his lips are curled up into a smile; you can feel it on your skin.

A shift of power. Just like losing a weapon. After all of that, he’s still unfazed. No matter what you do, no matter how many times you gain the upper hand, it’s never enough.

He shifts, just slightly. Rotates his body to pin you against the wall with his left hip, leaves his left hand splayed out under your thigh to support your weight. His right hand is free now, and he brings it between your legs.

Helpless. You’re pinned against the wall, at his mercy, waiting for it. Your neediness is so obvious, and you know that — your heavy breaths, your light tugs at his hair. After everything, it turns out that you’re the desperate one. 

When he finally touches you, it’s as teasing as everything else. He grazes his long, slender fingers over the fabric between your legs, starting at the spot right over your dripping entrance and running them up slowly to your clit. When he gets there, he increases the pressure. Just slightly. It’s not by much; his touch is so light that it almost tickles. He moves his fingers back and forth over the wet fabric, gentle.

“You like being helpless, don’t you?” he says.

Tongue on your throat, fingers on your pussy. And you’re so sensitive at both points that you’re squirming, even though you’re pinned to the wall. His breaths are a little heavier now that he’s touching you. Blood, sweat, cigarettes: the smell of him fills your head. Gets you high until you feel like you’re floating.

It’d be easy to let go. To give in to this pleasure, because that’s how good it is when he toys with you. But, through the thick fog of pleasure and want clouding your head, your objective is surfacing again.

As much as you want to indulge, you’ve been buying time for a reason.

You’ve been waiting for an opportunity. And he was sloppy again. He was careless, hoisting you up on the wall like this. Because now, lifted up like this, the knife he’d left buried in the wall is much closer to your hand.

And now — while he’s distracted, while he’s breathing hard with his face in your neck and his fingers at work between your thighs — now’s the time.

You thread your fingers through his hair, pushing his face a little further into your neck. As carefully and as subtly as you can, you encourage him. Distract him.

“That feels so good,” you murmur. “Don’t stop.”

And it does feel good, and you don’t want him to stop. Maybe you’d regret what you have to do next, if this weren’t a matter of life and death. But it is a matter of life and death. And no matter how much your body wants him inside — no matter how desperate you are for him to relieve all the tension he’s building up — this is the opening you were waiting for. The opportunity.

You skim your fingers up the wall, drawing them closer and closer to the knife, with movements that are almost as slow and painstaking as his. You keep your other hand in his hair, applying a little more pressure to ensure that his face stays buried in your neck — so that he’s completely blind to what you’re doing with your other hand.

He seems too engrossed in you to notice, anyway; whatever predatory instinct he’d displayed earlier is hibernating. He’s just running on desire now: sucking your neck harder, applying a little more pressure to the wet fabric over your pussy. Feverish, almost. It feels good — insistent. And the more insistent his fingers get, the wetter you get; by the time your slow movements pay off — your fingers finally bumping the knife — your pussy is already dripping.

You hold your breath for a moment. You let yourself indulge — enjoying the teasing, the throbbing between your thighs — as you slowly wrap your fingers around the handle of the knife.

It’ll take a lot of force to get it out of the wall, you think; you’ll have to do it as quickly as possible. Maybe you’ll hold his head against your neck to disorient him, at least for a moment, before he can break free. You’ll plunge the knife into his throat before he even knows what’s happening. 

If you could say a farewell, you would. Sorry, Detective, you’d say. It’s just self-preservation. Someone like you would understand something like that, right? But your hands are so good. Your mouth. It is a shame — I wasn’t kidding back when I said that. If we were on the same side, I’d let you fuck me dumb.

You bet he’d be a good fuck.

You grip the knife tightly, then pull it from the wall with a sudden burst of force. It slips from the drywall with far less resistance than you’d expected. You’re surprised at the ease of it for a moment. In the same moment, his hand — the one that was just between your legs a second ago — catches your wrist, slamming it back against the wall so hard that you cry out in pain.

You’ve somehow managed to keep your grip on the knife, but it’s no use when he has your wrist pinned.

He pulls back, looking down at you disdainfully. “Nice try. You were being such a good girl, though. What happened to that?”

“You shouldn’t be so naive,” you chide, defiant. “You’re sloppy, you know. If you keep on like this… in this line of work… you might get hurt. You should really be more careful.”

He pulls your wrist off the wall, then slams it back again. Harder this time. Pain shoots through your hand; you lose your grip on the knife, and he swipes it away before it falls. Deprives you of it for the second time.

And then he deprives you of that position too, sets you back down on the floor, so you’re looking up at his cold face, watching fearfully as he brings the knife up to your mouth.

He taps it against your lips. You flinch. Once, twice, and then he’s pushing the flat side of the blade against your lower lip, pulling it down while he talks down to you.

“Between the two of us,” he says, releasing your lip, “I think you should be more careful.”

He slips a slender finger into the collar of your shirt. For a moment, it brushes against the bare skin of your chest, before he pulls your collar outward slightly. His other hand comes up, hovers the knife above the fabric of your shirt for a moment, the point so sharp it could pierce the tension in the air.

“You keep these pretty sharp, don’t you?”

A rhetorical question; he’s already bringing the knife down on your collar. The taut fabric parts easily under the blade, sliced through like butter; the only hint of resistance is a muted ripping sound as he draws the knife downward, cutting your shirt further and further open. He keeps the tip of the blade close to your skin the entire way down. That tiny space between your body and the sharp point feels charged, electric.

You shudder. If he were just a centimeter closer, he could split your skin open, part it slowly with the fabric. If he wanted, he could open you up. Flay you. You’re sure he won’t kill you before he’s fucked you, but that doesn’t mean he won’t hurt you.

“Careful,” he says. “Stay still.”

You obey, barely breathing; you’re utterly silent, afraid to make the smallest movement. Because you know, very well, just how sharp that knife is. So you just watch, holding your breath, as he takes his time traveling downward, slicing your shirt open slowly.

After what feels like an eternity of anticipation, he reaches the bottom hem. When he applies that final bit of pressure, the two halves of your shirt finally part completely. The fabric, once taut, springs open, leaving much of your abdomen exposed. There’s a plane of skin now visible between the tattered halves of your shirt; his view is interrupted only by the lace of your bra. It frames your cleavage, rises and falls rapidly with your quickening breaths.

He hooks a finger under the middle of your bra — the thinnest part, between the cups. His knuckle grazes against your cleavage, makes you shiver. You take a shaky breath, and he tugs the band slightly forward, away from your skin.

“You look good in lace,” he says.

With one finger hooked under your bra, pulling the band outward, he flips the knife in his other hand, quickly, so the sharp side is facing outward. His fingers are deft. Agile, practiced and familiar with a blade.

He slips it carefully into the space he’s made with his other hand — the tiny open space between your bra band and your cleavage. That space is so small that you feel the dull end of the blade brush against your skin before he draws it forward.

“... It’s a shame.”

Then he pulls the blade all the way forward; the sharp, glinting edge meets the band of your bra. The knife catches there for a moment; the thick fabric resists, just for a futile second, before it gives under the blade.

Your bra parts just like your shirt: two halves cut apart, pulled outward by the sudden release of tension.

You shudder, looking down at that window of exposed skin bordered by the tatters of your bra and your shirt. Your stomach is visible; the two halves of your ruined shirt are draped wide over your chest, just barely covering your nipples.

He ducks his head again; his lips brush lightly over your jaw, and the knife comes to rest right beneath the space where your collar bones meet.

You know the sharp end is still facing him, but your heart is hammering violently in your chest anyway. One small movement of his hand. That’s all it would take to change the angle of the knife. To press the point into your skin. Or even to flip it, to lay the sharp side of the blade flat against your chest and cut. 

You thought you were helpless before, but now …

The knife on your chest scares you. So does the man holding it. What kind of person is he, really? He’s a killer; that much you know. But would he take it further than that? Would he subject you to something worse than death before killing you? Would he cut you up for fun? To see how much you can take while you’re still breathing? Would he carve you up before fucking you?

He places a light kiss on your jaw. “You’re so quiet.”

And then the knife begins its descent downward — the cold, dull scratching sensation of its point on your skin. The slow, lazy trail of sharp metal down your body. The feeling is horrifying. Thrilling. 

“What happened to that attitude of yours?”

You’d usually have a response ready. Something quick, sarcastic. But this time is different. For the first time in a while, as he trails the knife slowly downward, you feel truly afraid. Fear has scattered your thoughts, jumbled them into an incoherent mess of wanting more and dreading more.

He’s so cold, unreadable. But the more time that passes, the more dangerous you suspect he is. This gentle teasing belies something more sinister. You think of the brute force with which he slammed your wrist to the wall, the wild grin on his face when you’d broken his nose. The way he’d looked at you in the mirror with the knife to your throat — more like a wolf than a dog.

And those words: You’re on borrowed time.

Beneath the icy surface lies something cruel. Savage and merciless.

“Go ahead,” he says. “You always have something to say, don’t you?”

You shake your head slowly, afraid to make any other movement. All you can do is feel : sensitive and trembling, as he moves the point of the blade down your chest ever so slowly. His lips move downward too: soft kisses left on your jaw, scattered down your neck, his tongue darting out to taste your skin every so often.

The knife is in the middle of your chest now, trailing down between your tits. His tongue teases as it descends; the blade threatens. Two opposite sensations. Pleasure on one end, terror on the other. But they’re two poles of arousal. To the same end — they leave goosebumps behind, leave you dripping and clenching. They leave you wishing he’d move down faster, waiting desperately to feel both between your thighs.

His free hand skims upward, in the opposite direction, grazing lightly over your abdomen until his long fingers are slipping under the ruined fabric of your shirt and bra. You let out a breathy moan when he starts to knead gently at the soft flesh there — shown a little mercy, gifted the pleasure of his hands on you. His thumb grazes over your nipple, and when you mumble please , he pinches it softly. For a moment, it feels like relief: a little lessening of the unbearable want that’s building between your thighs. 

But it’s not enough. You need more. 

The tension is too much, built up in three places at once — the point of the knife between your tits, his lips at the base of your neck, his calloused fingers squeezing at your chest. All his focus on the points that make you drip. The points that’d make you squirm, if you weren’t so terrified to move — but maybe, of all of these things, it’s the fear that’s really getting you this soaking wet.

When the wetness has spread between your thighs — when you’re so drenched that you know it’s soaked completely through your leggings — and when the tension is so high that it’s palpable, absolutely unbearable —  that’s when he really begins his descent down your body.

He moves down quicker this time — the knife descending, his mouth following in its path. While the point of the blade drops from your ribcage to your stomach, his lips trail down from your neck to your collarbones. And his free hand leaves your chest, skimming down your side; it lingers at your waist for a moment, before squeezing softly at your hip.

He’s lowering his body slowly, his hot tongue following the pathway carved by the cool metal as it moves further and further down your body. The puffy heaviness between your thighs grows, blooms, the further down he drops. 

All the way down, until he’s falling to his knees in front of you. If he didn’t have you at knifepoint, the action might even be reverential.

But it feels good enough to be reverential: his warm breaths fanning over the plane of your exposed skin, the hot path of his tongue gradually turning cold. You shiver, from the temperature change, or maybe from the sensation of the knife moving closer and closer to your pussy.

You feel so empty. Painfully so. Your insides are fluttering and dripping, clenching around nothing by the time the knife travels over the hem of your leggings. His mouth isn’t far behind; as the blade slips down over the fabric — down your lower stomach, down your pelvis, getting you wetter the further it descends — his mouth lingers above the hem of your leggings, scattering wet kisses all over the last stretch of exposed skin.

He stays there for a while, kisses you over and over, sucking lazily at your skin until, finally, the blade arrives at its destination. He presses the dull edge of it into the fabric slightly. Applies just the right amount of pressure to just the right spot. Beneath the fabric, directly beneath the pressure of the knife, your clit pulses. You shudder at that tiny bit of relief, the feeling of the knife pressing against your clit.

He continues to kiss your lower stomach, starts to drag the dull edge of the blade up and down. He’s slow, methodical, never letting up on that sensitive spot.

And now, carding your hand softly through his hair as he rubs your clit with the knife, you think you’d do anything to get him to fuck you.

“Do you want it?” he asks.

“Yes.” Another swipe of the knife’s dull edge against your pulsing clit. A quiet whine. “Please.”

“Are you going to behave?”

You nod. “I promise.”

“Look at you,” he muses, smiling slightly, “so obedient you’d barely even believe you’re a criminal at all.”

He flips the blade around again, so the sharp side is facing you. His other hand tugs the fabric of your leggings away from your inner thighs, far enough out so there’s some give. And then he pierces the slack fabric with the knife, careful and precise.

“That’s all it took, huh?” he says, gliding the knife across the fabric — lengthening the cut, with the blade terrifyingly close to your skin. “All it took to get rid of all that attitude… just a little knife?”

You’re holding your breath. Feeling the air hit your damp skin through the tear. He parts the fabric between your thighs, cuts your leggings away, slow and patient. He doesn’t stop until your panties are exposed. And that massive tear tells him everything — what you’re feeling, wanting — lets none of your anticipation go unseen. Between your thighs, the exposed skin is wet and slick; your panties are dark, damp with arousal.

Everything exposed is devoured, eaten up with a glance. He licks more blood off his lip, presses the side of the blade against your pussy. Skims the flat edge of the blade back and forth over your pulsing clit — lazy and light on your panties, just a tease.

He looks upward. “You’re a good girl for me, aren’t you?” 

You nod, obedient. He smiles a little at that, grabs the fabric at the front of your panties, tugging it upward until it’s tight, snug against the shape of your pussy. Until everything is visible through the damp fabric. It’s a reward for good behavior — more friction on your pussy, more pressure, more pleasure. And when the flat edge of the knife rubs over your clit again, the sensation is that much more intense behind the added pressure of the taut fabric digging into you.

Your lip is caught between your teeth, distorting the little moan that comes tumbling out.

“You see how good you get to feel when you behave?” he says.

You nod again. You’ll do anything to get him to relieve this building tension. You’ll behave, if that’s what it takes . That statement lingers in your mind; so does its implication — that the better you are, the better you’ll feel.

“I knew you had it in you to play nice.”

He taps the blade against your clit. Once, twice, a third time — a little harder with each tap. That impact is so much on your clit, the stimulation too much; you’re already so sensitive under the pull of the fabric. Your hips jerk forward with each tap, chasing the knife. It’s reflexive; you can’t help it. But it terrifies you — the prospect of your own body’s response getting you cut.

But, still, you’re so wet. Wetter than before, soaking through your panties, tightening your fingers desperately in his tousled hair. The side of the blade moves over your clit, torturously slow as he rubs the intensity of the hits away. You want more, need more , than this. But he’s such a tease : tapping your clit, then rubbing it with the knife — back and forth, and back and forth, over and over, until you’re moaning.

When he slips his finger under the fabric of your panties, you think he’ll finally touch you. But he’s still playing with you, his knuckle just brushing over your pussy before he tugs the fabric outward and away from your slick skin. The crotch is thick with wetness, drenched through.

And then, just as he did with your bra, he slips the knife into the space between your panties and your pussy, blade facing outward. It slices easily through the crotch of your panties.

They’re hanging open now; you can feel the air on your clenching entrance, cold on your glistening wet skin. But he teases still, bringing the knife to your leggings and cutting more of them away, neglecting your pussy to expose more of your skin, until you’re dripping down your thighs.

You know he can see how wet you are; his eyes trace over every inch of your skin, attentive and prying. He’s too patient; he’s so meticulous that you’d almost believe he’s completely indifferent to you. But the bulge in his slacks gives him away — the thick, hard shape of his cock pushing the fabric outward, the wet spot of precum spreading there.

You think he must love to torture himself as much as he loves to torture you. 

He cuts more and more of your leggings away, until the band of your panties is exposed to him. He slips his finger under the point where the band is thinnest. And then — with a movement that’s become methodical and familiar — he pulls the band outward, slips the knife under it, and slices through.

The only difference this time is that it’s the last cut that needs to be made to expose the parts of you that crave him most. And just like that, he tugs at the ruined lace, pulls the cut garment away and off of you, dropping it to the floor.

You’re bare, your pussy exposed to him completely through your torn leggings. Little beads of arousal pool at your entrance, rolling down your thighs.

He meets your eyes. “You like knives? They get your pussy wet?”

You nod. Even with him down between your thighs, you still feel small. You still feel the need to beg.

“Please touch me.”

What he gives you is barely a touch; maybe you haven’t been good enough yet for that. He skims his fingers over your clit, then upward slightly. His fingers press into the skin, tugging it gently up to expose your clit more. And he waits for a second, looks up at your expectant face from between your thighs and waits for you to beg again. So you do, and when you do, he taps the cool metal of the knife against your sensitive clit over and over, watching your hips jerk forward.

You thought the feeling was intense before. But now that you’re completely exposed, the sensitivity makes you tear up, makes you beg for him to fuck you.

He replaces his fingers with the knife, holds the hood over your clit up with the dull end of the blade instead. And now that his hand is free, he flips it over, palm up between your legs. You’re already parting your legs wider for him. Anticipating a real touch.

But when he slips his fingers between your thighs, they only tease. Two fingers brush lightly over your dripping entrance, collecting all of the slippery arousal seeping out of you. 

You’re clenching right above his fingers, fluttering, breaths catching. You wish he’d fuck you with his fingers, make you cum, give you everything you need. But you know better than that. So it doesn’t come as a surprise when he deprives you of them without giving you any kind of relief. He just gets them wet without even pushing them into you, just brushes the juices dripping out of you upward, slick fingers smearing wetness up to your clit until it’s coated.

You’re so sensitive, so wet and desperate, that you know he could make you cum with the smallest amount of effort. All you need is a little more pressure, a few circles of his fingers over your clit. He must know it, but he doesn’t even give you that. He’s not finished playing with you.

His hand and the knife swap places again, deft fingers spreading your pussy open so he can slap the blade directly against your sensitive clit. Harder, this time. More intense. And those slaps are lewd : noisy and obscenely wet with all the slick he dragged up. You whimper, but he ignores it, toying with your clit until you’re a whimpering mess. By the time he lets up, the blade is wet and messy, smeared with your arousal. 

He flips it around, looking down at the mess of slick liquid on the metal. Your desperation right there in front of his face — it’s embarrassing. It’s humiliating, even, to just stand here as you watch his eyes run all over the knife. He devours the sight, eats it up. 

His tongue meets the blade. It runs up the flat edge, starting just above the handle and licking all the way up to the tip, until the metal is completely clean of you.

Another thick rush oozes out of your pussy, gooey when it seeps down your thighs. 

“Fuck.” With his eyes on your pussy, and his tongue on his lip.

Now that he’s finally gotten a taste, things feel different. He looks a little desperate himself. A little urgent. A little — or a lot — like a dog before it’s finally given permission to devour a treat.

And you’re getting wetter right in front of him. There’s more to lick up, more to taste. All he has to do is put his tongue on your little hole and drink up everything that’s seeping out for him.

He adjusts the blade in his hand. Clasps the handle between his ring and his pinky, blade in, to free his other fingers. Then he runs both hands up your thighs — starting in the middle, rough fingers grazing up the skin. Squeezing the soft flesh. Gently at first, and then a little harder. A little needier the further up he goes.

Leaned back against the wall, with your legs spread around him, you thread your fingers through his hair and watch his eyes. They flit between your pussy and your face. But the closer his hands get to your pussy, the longer his gaze lingers there. You’re clenching up, anticipating. You’ve been so good , so well-behaved. You wonder if he’ll finally give you what you need, or if he’s going to tease you some more.

But something is different. Something has shifted. Power has changed hands again, that easily, and all of a sudden — after just one little taste —  he’s desperate. He’s needy, eyes locked on your pussy, too hungry to tease, too hungry to do anything but devour what’s in front of him. A dog to a bone. Practically drooling. He’d probably roll over if you so much as said the word.

So that knife suddenly seems less dangerous in his hand. It’s become suddenly inconsequential, the gravity of it falling far short of the want you feel. The pleasure that’s coming. Less fear, more anticipation; the latter builds and builds until it clouds your senses, until his fingers are brushing over the tops of your thighs. Until his fingertips are finally on your slick pussy. Until you’re clenching, watching him spread you open, pulling your slick skin apart with his thumbs.

He lingers there for a moment with his long fingers splayed out on you, and his thumbs spreading you open. Hot breaths leave his slightly parted lips, warming your skin; your hole glistens and quivers, neglected. 

You push his head forward, fingers knotted in his hair. The knife doesn’t matter at this moment; you’re just thinking about how much you need to feel his tongue. And when you finally do feel it — when it comes darting out between the lips he’s keeping spread open with his thumbs — he doesn’t tease. He goes directly for your clenching slit, laps up all of the moisture oozing out of you with his hot tongue, head tilted slightly to the side. He gets a real taste of you.

And then he swipes those juices up, dragging all the slick collected on his tongue from your entrance and up, until he’s coating your clit with a mixture of his spit and your arousal.

The stimulation on your clit is intense. Hot, wet. All he’s doing is circling it, slow and light with his tongue, but you’ve been so worked up for so long that you’re already close to cumming. You want his cock, but his mouth is too good. He’s attentive with his tongue. Persistent . Just a little more, and you’ll cum on his tongue before he even gets his dick inside of you.

You want it. He might be patient, but you’re not. So you encourage him, tightening your hand in his hair and pulling his head forward. And he’s obedient, responsive. A well-trained dog; at the slightest tug, he takes the hint and gives you more, latching his mouth onto your clit so he can suck it, lick it, flick his tongue over it — attention that makes heat rise up in the pit of your stomach.

Just a few minutes of his tongue on your pussy and you’re already slurring, threading your fingers through his hair while you murmur soft encouragements. It’s so good, keep going, I’m so close. But you can barely even get the words out; your head’s spinning, and your stomach’s knotted up, more and more tension craving a release —

I’m gonna cum in your mouth.

He looks upward, eyes heavy, hair messy. Lips wet, saying, I want it. 

He adjusts, spreading you open with the hand still clutching the knife — ring and pinky on the handle, pointer and middle fingers in a V shape, exposing you so he can keep licking your clit. And now that his other hand is free, he brings it between your thighs.

Like a dog waiting for a treat, he asks, Are you gonna give it to me? 

Yeah. I’m gonna cum for you.

He brushes his long fingers over your entrance. That tension might burst through at any moment, but you’re holding off. He’s neglected your hole for so long, giving your clit all his attention. But if he puts his fingers inside, you know the tension will snap so much harder.

Pretty little pussy , he says, teasing again — swiping his fingers lightly over your seeping slit. I want to feel it cumming on my fingers.

You’re already trembling, already moaning, when he finally fucks a long finger into you. In, deep, then out. You watch it slip in, watch it come back out — coated in slippery liquid from your insides.

Then he’s cleaning the slick off his finger, licking it up, hungry. 

You taste so good.  

He spits on his fingers, brings them back to your hole to smear the spit all over your entrance before he fucks one finger into you — pushes it deep, pulls it back out, swearing softly under his breath. And the next time his hand moves, he’s fucking two fingers into you, stretching you out more while his mouth meets your clit again.

He fingerfucks your pussy while he eats it: two fingers covered in spit, coated in more and more of your juices the wetter you get, plunging in and out of your hole, over and over. His hands are good; his tongue is better. He knows just what he’s doing, swirling his tongue over your pulsing clit while he curls his fingers toward himself, stimulating that sensitive little spot right at the front wall. It’s more and more obscene the closer he brings you to cumming — mouth sucking harder, fingers fucking your pussy so hard that the squelching is loud and lewd, that your slick runs down his knuckles. Those two spots brutalized at once; the intensity is so high it’s overwhelming.

Your words come out jumbled. R-right there. Like that.

He’s steady, consistent at ramping up the intensity — each movement more pleasurable the closer to your orgasm you get. And you’re so close; the wave’s about to crash over. You’re already twitching around his fingers and pulsing under his tongue as your muscles prepare to release all the tension at once.

Don’t stop, I’m close. 

The response is hot on your clit. Yeah? Ah, fuck.

Oh my god, I’m gonna —

You hit your limit before you even finish your sentence, clamping down around his fingers with a moan. It hits hard. Your insides are convulsing, and your clit is twitching, and he’s panting, worked up just from feeling you cum. But he’s still attentive, guiding you through it — sucking your clit, curling his fingers persistently against that sensitive spot. He does it until you’re spent, licks and fucks wave after wave of pleasure out until his fingers and tongue are coated in cum. And even after it’s done, after he pulls his dripping fingers out of your cunt, he gives your twitching slit one last lick — cleans up your gooey mess.

You come down blinking blearily, with eyes that are so heavy with pleasure that in the space of a slow blink, he’s already risen to his feet. Tucked the knife away, into his pocket. He’s towering over you again. You’d almost forgotten how big he was, with him down between your thighs.

But you grab at his tie, pulling him down to you again. You whine —  I want to taste it. Your pussy, all over his tongue: you’re dying for a taste. And he shares, dipping his head down to part your lips with his, pushing his tongue into your mouth. You lick your cum off of it, drink it up. It tastes good. Like pleasure. Liquid euphoria.

He adjusts, his nose bumping yours as he pulls back. Wet fingers push at your lips, force their way into your mouth, and you suck them clean — the same fingers that made you cum, the same fingers your pussy clenched around and gushed out onto.

And then his tongue is on yours again, and his hands are caging you in on either side, and his hips are pressing you into the wall — all of it harder than before, more urgent.

You can feel how hard his cock is, how thick. You can feel it throbbing through his slacks — in need of relief, neglected for so long. While his cock was leaking onto his thigh, growing painfully hard, he was attentive; he was patient, licking you and fucking you until you came all over his tongue. 

That same tongue explores your mouth; his hips start to rock against you, pushing you back into the wall — the first sign of neediness, of selfishness, after holding back for so long. That rhythm picks up, a little more impatience breaking through after so much self-denial. After all that waiting, he must be so desperate to get his dick wet, to dip in and feel the pussy he got soaking wet. To reap all the benefits his tongue sowed.

He deserves it, doesn’t he?

He deserves to be inside, feeling how wet he’s gotten you. Each little rock of his hips pushes you harder against the wall. He just keeps getting more needy. You’re spurred on by the thought of how much he’s been holding back, and how desperate he’s gotten. You want to shatter his frigid exterior and see what kind of animal waits under the surface.

Your guard’s dropping; you’re trailing your hand downward, between your body and his, teasing him through his slacks again. He’s even harder than he was earlier. Bigger, slacks wetter around the tip. He shudders when you run your fingers over it. 

You squeeze his dick through his slacks, feel it twitch and jump through the fabric. “You want it, don’t you?”

He does, you know he does; that’s why he’s breathing hard, biting at your lip hungrily, nipping so hard it bleeds. A new taste spreads on your tongue, mixes with your cum and his spit. He licks the blood away, greedy. 

It’s an answer enough, but you press. “How bad do you want to fuck me?”

“How bad do you want to get fucked?” he counters, holding out still, even though you know he’s desperate for pussy.

He teases more, teases harder; you’re trying, but he’s still better at it. While you rub his dick, his fingers — still slick with spit from your mouth — graze softly over your nipples, circling and tweaking. 

You know what he’s doing —  he knows what he’s doing, focusing all his attention on your tits. He’s neglecting your pussy, ignoring it even after you’ve already recovered from your orgasm; the sensitivity has long since died down, and the thrumming feeling of new tension is building back up fast. He toys with your nipples with his blood-tinged tongue deep in your mouth until you’re soaking: all that cum from your orgasm mixed with new wetness.

While the kiss gets deeper, hungrier, you wonder: if his tongue and fingers were that good — if they made you that wet, made you cum that hard — how much better will you feel, and how much wetter will you get, when you’re clenching around his dick?

You wanted to wait to really touch him, to push until he hit his limit. But holding out is too hard; you can’t do it like he can. You don’t have the patience. Every second that ticks past feels like torture, and you’re dying to get your hands on his cock. 

After all that patience he showed you , you should’ve known you’d be the one to break first.

The scales tip again. This time, you’re the one who’s unable to help yourself — overwhelmed, clouded, indulgent. While he’s still teasing your nipples lazily, you’re impatiently putting your hand down his boxers. It’s hot between his legs; you can feel the slick spot on his boxers against the back of your hand as you finally wrap your fingers around his bare cock.

The weight of it in your hand, the size of it. Just the feeling of it in your fist makes you moan softly into his mouth; he shudders, twitches in your palm. Thick, hot, and slick — he’s a mess, precum smeared all over the shaft of his dick. He’s been so cold to you. Practically apathetic. But he can’t hide how much he wants to fuck you when his dick is dribbling onto your palm.

You make a tight, slick hole for him with your fist and stroke it. He’s so sensitive — breaths hitching, hips pushing you harder against the wall, fingers tweaking your nipple hard. You can tell how good it feels on his neglected cock, so you fuck him with your fist again, fingers tight. Up and down. He groans, breathing hard; his tongue pushes deeper into your mouth, chasing yours.

He’s losing his composure. Getting needy. You’ve been wanting to see him just like this: suddenly so desperate after withholding so much, more hungry to fuck you with each tight pump of your hand over his cock. 

It makes you wonder what exactly you were so afraid of. That knife was never really a threat, was it? He never actually hurt you. And from the way he’s reacting to your touch now — thrusting into your fist, bringing a big hand to your throat to squeeze it softly, breaths hitching into your mouth — he’s so desperate to fuck you that he wouldn’t really cut you, right? At least not before he gets his dick wet.

Maybe he’s not as dangerous as you thought. From the way things are going, maybe you’ll both make it out of this alive. Because you’re both so worked up and so desperate to fuck each other that nothing else really seems to matter.

You jerk his dick harder, and he groans. Your initial goal is snuffed out. Smothered by desire, just like your fear. And, because of that, whatever tether was on your boldness suddenly snaps.

Breathless, between sloppy kisses, with your voice distorted as his tongue dives in and out of your mouth, you ask, “Are you gonna keep playing games? Or are you gonna fuck me for real?”

He pants, thrusting into your slippery fist again as he squeezes your throat. “Don’t get greedy. Cumming on my fingers wasn’t good enough? What’s real to you?”

“You know what I want.”

He’s fucking your fist faster, his dick sliding in and out of the tight little hole you’re making with your fingers.

“You like to run your mouth, don’t you?” he says breathily. “So why don’t you use your words?”

His dick in your hand, the thought of him splitting your cunt open instead — it makes you drip. So you say it. 

“I want you in my pussy.”

“Are you gonna behave?”

“Haven’t I been?”

“That’s not what I asked you.”

“Pinky promise, Chief,” you say wryly. “I’ll be on my very best behavior.”

There’s a little snort of amusement before he picks you up — big hands under your ass, supporting you easily as you wrap your legs around his narrow waist.

He walks you over to the same dresser he had you bent over earlier. The gun is still there, in the top drawer. He’d stopped you from grabbing it before. As he sets you on top of the dresser, right above the drawer where the gun is stashed, you wonder why. Did he forget about it? Is his mind too clouded by the prospect of fucking you to care? 

You’d almost forgotten about it yourself. But, still, you marvel at how sloppy he is. He’s careless enough that you’re sure his attention will waver at some point. You have your doubts, but if he’s still planning to kill you, you should be equipped. So you’ll go for the gun when the time is right. You’ll just have to find an opening.

It’s easier said than done.

He’s watching you like a hawk. It’s a ravenous expression — predatory. He’d been frigid earlier, almost to the point of apathy. But the look on his face now is a dare . It says, Go ahead and misbehave if you want. I’m gonna fuck it right out of you.

You’re distracted by that look. But more than that, you’re distracted by his hands. They’re big. Calloused. His right hand is wounded, bloody and gashed from when you slashed him with the knife. You watch his hands as they pull his jacket off. Deft fingers, the same ones that were around your throat and in your mouth. You watch them undo the buttons on the cuffs of his blood-spattered dress shirt and push them up, revealing the veins scattered over his forearms. There’s so little of him exposed that every new glimpse of his skin makes you squirm.

His long fingers are on his tie now — working at the knot, pulling at it, exposing more and more of his chest as it loosens. He pulls both ends apart until they come undone, until they’re hanging open over his shoulders, thin lines of black stark on the white of his dress shirt. You rake your eyes down his abdomen. From the bit of his chest peeking out, down the plain of his white shirt, to the open zipper of his slacks. The tip of his dick is visible. It’s leaking, slick with precum.

He leans down, splaying his big hands out on either side of you, his fingers flat on top of the dresser. Thumbs just touching your outer thighs. Your fingers linger at the top button of his shirt, possessed by that need to see him, and once you’ve seen him, to feel him.

You’ve already undone the first two buttons when he starts to talk.

“I’m gonna ask you something. And now that you’re on your very best behavior, I want you to answer me.”

You nod, fingers undoing one button, then the next. His eyes are on you, tracking your movements closely. You wonder if he can see your fingertips trembling. That’s before he fixes his gaze on your face; you’re still looking downward, but you can feel it.

“There’s a balance in this world,” he says. “Don’t you think?”

Your fingers get shakier, moving downward to free more buttons as you bring your gaze up to meet his. “Are you interrogating me, Detective? What kind of question is that?”

But he presses. “What balances a crime?”

“Did you come here to talk philosophy?” you ask drily.

“I came here to set you straight.”

You look downward as the final button comes loose. His shirt is hanging open; he’s leaning so far forward that both ends of his tie are swinging slightly in the small space between his body and yours. You can feel his gaze, the expectation in it, but your eyes are glued on his bare abdomen. The curvature of his body from this angle, the harsh ridges of muscle covered in a sheen of sweat.

What balances a crime… You swallow through a mouth that’s dry from nerves, from want , as you skim your fingertips down his stomach. It’s hard, hot. Rising and falling, just slightly, each breath slow and steady. The heat under your fingertips is intense, but you know it’s nothing compared to what you’ll feel when his body is right on yours.

Balance. He’s right; there’s a scale in this world. In this society more than others. At one end of the scale sits crime. Heavy, dark and tainted. And on the other end… 

“Punishment,” you murmur, dragging your fingertips down his happy trail.

“That’s right.” He grabs the tattered halves of your shirt and bra. “Punishment . ” Pulls the ruined fabric off of you, leaving your torso completely bare. “Retribution.” You shudder, exposed. “Atonement.” Hairs rise and prickle on your skin. 

“For every crime,” he says, with his analytical eyes on your body, “there’s a price to pay.”

You pout upward. “I told you I’d be good for you. I have been good for you, haven’t I?”

“Sure you have,” he says coolly.

His fingers go for the tatters of your leggings. He starts at your hips, peels the tight fabric downward — rolling it down your thighs, then your calves, until he’s untangling it from around your bare feet and dropping it to the floor. 

You’re completely naked. Utterly exposed. But he continues to scan every inch of your body, as if he could expose you even more: peel the skin back, and see right through you. Open you up to the core. The fact that he’s still clothed — only his abdomen exposed, and the tip of his leaking cock — feels so unfair. It feels  unbalanced.

You feel more flustered by the moment, picked apart by his prying eyes.

“Don’t patronize me.” You’re scolding, but it comes out shaky. “What’s left to punish? I’m behaving just fine.”

“Don’t patronize you?” he says, leaning his weight on his right hand. His left settles on your upper thigh, long fingers spanning over the skin. “Then don’t play stupid. The scales were unbalanced before I even touched you.”

His face is so close to yours that you can smell the slight tinniness of the blood still lingering on his breath as he talks, the cigarette smoke hiding in the creases of his shirt.

“All that crime and no punishment.” He cocks his head to the side, eyes widening slightly. Doglike , you think. “Off your leash in this little hellhole.”

Off your leash. How ironic. But there’s something about the malice in his voice that makes you squirm. The way he looks down on you with disdain. It makes you impatient, makes your hands move — so that you’re reaching between his legs, forcing his slacks down first, his boxers next.

He looks down on you, watching as you cup your hand around the thick, hot shaft of his dick and squeeze, slicking your palm up with his precum. 

“You haven’t atoned for anything yet,” he sneers.

“I didn’t know you were judge, jury, and executioner,” you say, looking up at him through your lashes. His dick throbs in your palm, a hot glob of precum oozing from the tip. “You like doling out your version of justice, Detective? That must be quite the power trip for a poor little errand boy like you.”

He’s rough when he pulls you forward on the dresser. Closer to him. You spread your thighs wider around his legs, watching the gap between your bodies narrow until there’s no space left, and his dick is throbbing against the outside of your pussy. 

You wrap your fingers around the tip and stroke — short strokes, jerking slippery precum over the head with the base resting against your fluttering slit. Slick seeps out of your cunt, gets the shaft wet. 

He grabs your face by the cheeks, forcing you to look upward.

“I’d suggest you watch your mouth,” he says.

You bring your free hand to his collar, balling your fist up in it so you can pull his face down to yours, taunting. 

“Or what?”

“You’ll find out.”

You think he’ll kiss you then. You even try to pull his face closer, but he halts with his lips a hair’s breadth from yours. Shakes his head slightly. Unsympathetic with his denial.

You want to find out. There are so many things you want: to feel his lips on yours, to feel his tongue in your mouth, to feel his dick stretching your pussy out. Stuffed full. There are so many things you’re desperate for, and so many things he’s not giving you. 

But you understand. Withholding. Waiting. Denying. That’s all part of it: punishment. He won’t give you what you want until he decides that you deserve it.

And you’re not patient enough for that.

“I’m not as awful as you’re making me out to be,” you pout. “The System is flawed. You of all people should know it is. Latent criminal this, clouded hue that. It’s all bullshit. I’m just misunderstood.”

He shakes his head again, with his lips hovering right over yours. His big hands force your hips forward, pull you tighter against him. You think the proximity might drive you crazy, the way the base of his dick is nestled in your spread pussy, the shaft of it throbbing against your oozing entrance.

“Me?” he says, running his hands up your sides. “I understand you completely.”

“Then you get the tradeoff, right? I’ll be good. I just want you to fuck me.”

“I know you do,” he says.

He pulls his hips back slightly, deprives you of that pleasurable pressure of his dick on your pussy. You whine, watching a little line of your slick stick to him, gooey. The bottom of his cock glistens, slick with your juices.

“Are you always so mean?”

He raises his eyebrows. “ Mean? I can be mean, if that’s what you want. But this —” he says, pausing to drop a slow, thick glob of spit from his mouth to your pussy — “this isn’t mean. ”

He pulls back a little more, giving himself room to slip a hand between your thighs. “I’m giving you more than you deserve…” he says, calloused fingers meeting your clit to massage his spit into it.

“... I’m being generous. Don’t you think?” 

You shudder in response, watching him drag his spit all over your pussy, spreading it down to your dripping slit. And he’s dripping too — the tip of his dick leaking precum all over your palm as you jerk your hand over it.

“You don’t want to fuck me?” you whine.

“It’s not a matter of what I want,” he says. “It’s a matter of what you deserve.”

You think of how needy he was when he had you against the wall. The way his breaths caught while he fucked your fist. If it was a matter of what he wanted, he’d already have his dick deep in your pussy.

But instead, he’s taking it slow: dipping one finger in, sinking it deep. And when he’s gotten the entire length of it wet, he pulls it back out — takes a second to watch it glisten, before pushing it back in with a second next to it. Fucked knuckle deep with two fingers, you spread your legs wider, picking up your pace on his dick. Your eyes on his face, his on yours; he gets harder on your expression, and you get wetter on his. 

“But hey,” he says, curling his fingers up hard into that sensitive spot that makes your mouth drop open, “if you keep being so well-behaved, maybe I’ll fuck you with more than just my fingers.”

You grab his collar again, and this time he lets you pull his face all the way down to yours. He lets your lips meet, then part; at the same time that he pushes his tongue into your mouth, he pushes a third finger into your pussy. He fucks his fingers in so deep, kisses you so deep, swallowing up your moans while the squelching of your pussy gets louder and more lewd — more wet.

Into his mouth, with unabashed desperation — ”Fuck me. I want you.”

“Don’t get ahead of yourself.” He’s cruel with his words, crueler with his fingers. He curls them brutally, grazes them over that sensitive, pulsing spot in your pussy until the pressure feels unbearable. “If you want to cum, you can take what I’m giving you.”

He’s so mean . You don’t know when he became so punitive . You can’t even remember if the quiet sadism in his eyes was always there or if you coaxed it out. 

You want to complain, but you’re too breathless. You can’t form the words right now, but if you could, you’d say, But I’ve been waiting so long for your cock. You can act like you don’t want it, but I know you do.

If you weren’t so distracted by the sloppy, wet squelching sounds of his fingers massaging your insides until they’re weeping, if he wasn’t bullying so much pleasure out of you, and if you weren’t choking on your own moans, you’d say it —

You’re so cold to me, but you’re so fucking hard.

His fingers are quick and practiced. They’re good. But all you’re thinking of is how much better it’d feel if it was his cock in you. If all the hot precum slicking up your hand was dripping into your pussy instead. You have half a mind to wait, to hold off until he lets you cum on his dick. But you’re already clamping down on his fingers, and you know better, anyway; he won’t give you his dick until you’ve atoned.

But he’s right — giving you this much is generous. His fingers fuck deep, three at a time, pushing on some spot that coaxes moan after obscene moan out of you. You’re a mess: clutching at his collar desperately, legs spread obscenely wide, eyes rolling back. 

His voice buzzes in your ears. Soft and low. Composed.

You’re gonna cum? 

More a statement than a question. More an observation, an inevitable fact as you start to tense up on his fingers.

You’re not gonna deny yourself that, are you? You should take what you can get.

He gets meaner by the second — rougher and rougher on your insides — until there’s so much pressure that it makes your toes curl. Heavy breaths hang the air, mostly yours, heightening when he puts a thumb on your clit, rubbing it while he fingerfucks you.

Or are you that much of a masochist?

There’s no response in your foggy mind except for the one that slips out.

“Oh my god, I’m gonna cum. ” 

He smiles against your mouth.

You crash over the edge, feel the pleasure wash over you with a moan. Trembling thighs, curled toes, and your teeth closing in on his lip, biting down hard enough to draw blood. Maybe it’s the pain that makes him so brutal . He plunges his fingers in deep — to the knuckle — and curls them up, fast and hard, forcing your orgasm out of your contracting walls while you suck the blood from his torn lip.

It’s too strong, too intense, too good. You didn’t really have him pegged for a sadist. But when you whine hazily for him to slow down — fuckfuckslowplease — he does the opposite, speeding up until you whimper. 

Pathetic little noises that make his cock pulse in your fist. That’s how you really know you’re fucked .

You’d say something. You fucking asshole, that gets you off? But you’re too overwhelmed with something between pleasure and pain as he fingers you harder — mouth slamming shut, gritting your teeth, eyes rolling back. You’re covered in him. Precum oozing onto your fingers, blood coating your tongue. Hit by the pleasure like a ton of bricks, your pussy clenching over and over again on his mean fingers while he talks softly against your mouth. 

See how well this pussy takes it? I knew you were a good little girl this entire time.  

When it starts to die down, he’s as covered with you as you are with him, fingers dripping with your cum. And you’re wet everywhere, spent : sweat rolling down your temples, slick still seeping out around his fingers. And even when it’s done — when exhaustion replaces the intensity of pleasure, when you start to gasp again for him to slow down because it’s too sensitive, fuck! — even then, when you beg, he doesn’t let up.

The end of your orgasm blurs into something new. Something as unbearable as it is pleasurable. Something that hurts.

“If I know one thing about lowlives like you,” he’s saying — low and cold, the words buzzing in your ears above the sound of your own incoherent moans, babbles and half-sobs — “it’s that you’re hedonists. You live for pleasure. All that begging and now you want me to stop?”

His fingers press hard against that sensitive patch at the front wall of your pussy — stroking over it, pushing into it. There’s a sensation building in your lower stomach; it’s an uncomfortable pressure, a fuzzy feeling that heightens quickly. It spreads in the arches of your feet — makes your toes curl, your eyes roll back.

This pleasure is blinding, leaves no room for anything but two sensations: the feeling of his fingers squelching in your cunt, his low voice expanding in your groggy mind.

“Weren’t you so desperate to get fucked?”

There’s an urgency growing in your lower stomach, heightening each time he strokes over that sensitive little patch. With panic, you wonder if this overwhelmingly wet, overwhelmingly full feeling — the growing desperation to release something — is coming from your bladder.

You try to complain. To tell him that it feels weird, that he should really stop before you make a mess all over him. But you can’t form the words; your jaw is slack, and all you can do is babble. You can’t even see straight; your eyes are blurry. With pleasure, with tears from the humiliation, from the unbearable overstimulation, from all of this  —

“You’re not done,” he says into your mouth. “Give me another.”

— Punishment. You’re getting just what you deserve: insides fucked until your entire body is trembling, your pussy soaking wet, that knot of tension in your lower stomach quivering and ready to burst. You try desperately to quash the feeling; the pressure inside of you is so high that you’re afraid of what’ll happen when a feeling that intense releases —

He curls his fingers again. Quick, nasty and violent, while his other hand tweaks your nipple. You manage one last moan, an obscenely lilting I’m gonna — I’m gonna — you’re gonna make me — oh, fuck!

— and then the moment is on you. Your pussy tenses up again and then, in a split second, the tension snaps. The urgency bursts through, comes spraying out all over his fingers. You gasp into his mouth, feel the grin against your lips as his fingers massage your contracting walls relentlessly, coaxing more cum out of your pussy. Slick liquid shoots out — pressure releases, pleasure racks your puffy cunt — and you drench his upturned palm while he teases.

I know you really wanna be good for me, sweetheart.

You can hear how obscenely wet you are, and when you both pull back to look down at your pussy, you can see it.

But you get so fucking filthy when you’re cumming.

You watch your cum coat his fingers, over and over again. Another wave of pleasure, another burst of liquid, spraying from your convulsing cunt onto his hand. And past it . Maybe you should be embarrassed, but it feels too good, watching each burst squirt onto his abdomen, dampening his unbuttoned white shirt and coating his exposed stomach in your cum.

Now, what am I gonna do with you?

You can barely keep your eyes focused; they’re heavy with pleasure, were already drooping after cumming on his fingers the first time. But you want to see . So you force them open, watching groggily as your squirt gets all over him. More and more of it with each burst of liquid his fingers fuck out. It sprays onto his hand, onto his forearm, onto the ridges of his flexing stomach, glistening as it drips down his abs and collects at the base of his dick.

You dip your trembling fingers in it. Get them wet, so you can drag the squirt up the pulsing shaft of his cock, stroking it upward until the slick liquid mixes with the precum dribbling from the tip. Another wash of pleasure — his fingers working another gush of liquid from your cunt. It’s obscene. It’s filthy.

Filth breeds filth. The both of you, disgusting. He’s enjoying it; you’re encouraging it. 

You make me feel so fucking good, you’re slurring, hazy eyes glued on his glistening cock. Feels so good when you make me squirt. You’re imagining his slicked-up dick sinking into your pussy. God. You’re thinking about that squirt gushing out around him with each thrust. 

You whimper as it starts to die out, insides puffy and overwhelmed. One last intense wave, your walls clamping onto his curling fingers. One last burst of liquid coating his stomach, and then you’re a mess , tears rolling down your cheeks, eyelids drooping. Ruined. You come down wet and trembling, half-expecting him to torture you again. To demand another . 

But his fingers still inside of you instead, granting you a little reprieve. For the moment, you calm your shaky breaths, and listen to your heartbeat slow. But you can see the sadism blooming in his eyes. The intrigue, and the insatiable hunger. You know he’s not finished.

“Look at you,” he says. “What a mess.”

You follow his line of sight down, between your legs. You’re naked, you’re ruined, you’re so wet it’s embarrassing. The puddle of slick pooling between your thighs on the dresser top is obscene. He hesitates, lets silence fill the space, lets you sit with your humiliation. 

Just another punishment. Just part of the game. You grimace.

But he continues to play, pulling his drenched fingers from your stretched, twitching slit. They glisten in the light as he raises them. A single cloudy droplet oozes from the knuckle right before his mouth closes around his wet fingers to suck them clean.

You laugh shakily. “You really are a sick fuck, aren’t you? No wonder they have you locked up.” 

As if the sight of him licking his fingers doesn’t send another rush between your thighs. As if there isn’t more slick seeping out of your cunt. What a mess . He was right; you’re a mess of your own squirt and cum. There’s so much liquid on the dresser you don’t even know how you’re still getting wetter, but you are. 

“Hey, what’s the matter?” he drawls. Faux sympathy. Condescension. “Do you want a taste too?” 

He’s already running his fingers up the mess of your slick coating his abs, collecting it, scooping it up on his fingertips. His other hand comes to your cheeks and squeezes. He tells you to open your mouth, and you do; and when he puts his squirt-coated fingers in your mouth and tells you to suck, you do.

“See? You can follow the rules. Not so hard, is it? You’re like a brand new person.”

He removes his fingers from your mouth; you lick the spit from your lips. “When are you gonna fuck me, Detective?”

“Patience is a virtue,” he says drily. “Not that I’d call someone like you a paragon of virtue.”

There’s a smart reply already forming on your tongue, but you freeze when you see him reaching for the handle of the drawer next to your left calf. It’s that drawer. The same one you’d gone for earlier before he’d pushed you away from the dresser. That drawer holds your get-out-of-jail-free card — the weapon you’ve been trying to scheme your way to this entire time — and he’s about to find it.

It feels like your heart’s dropping into your stomach. Biding your time, waiting for the right moment — what a joke. You should’ve been more aggressive, should’ve gone for it while you still could have. He’d lulled you into a false sense of security, acted like he’d forgotten all about your move to that little drawer, acted like he was too eager to fuck you to check what you have stashed in there.  

You’ve underestimated him over and over again, and now it’s coming back to bite you in the ass. 

“You didn’t think I forgot, right?” he says, pausing with his hand on the drawer handle. “What are you hiding in here?”

“Don’t—”

But he’s already pulling the drawer open. There’s a blur of sleek black, the barrel clean. Pristine. And you know — when he sees it, when he clicks his tongue, when he smiles — that it’s all over.

He pulls the pistol from the drawer. Studies it with sharp, curious eyes — fingers comfortable on the frame, testing the weight.

It’s a Beretta M9. All black. Unregistered, smuggled in from somewhere overseas where they used to issue them to soldiers. 

It’s one of several guns stashed around the room. This one’s always comfortable in your hands, if only a little big.

In his, it’s small. His hands are big. Rough, comfortable, but cautious, wrapping around the frame deliberately. The weapon is dissected by analytical eyes, three fingers wrapped around the grip, index finger stiff against the barrel. The safety locked. For now.

You’re fucked. He doesn’t say anything, and you’re glad for it, because you don’t think you’d be able to come up with a coherent response if he did. You’re spiraling — mouth dry, heart pounding. If everything before was punishment, you’re terrified to know what he has in store for you now. And if you were vulnerable before, then you’re as good as dead now: naked, terrified, and dwarfed by his presence the way his hands dwarf the pistol.

He looks upward. “Beretta. Kinda tactical, don’t you think? I’d take you for a Glock kind of girl.”

You can’t respond. You can only tremble, watching him press on the little button that releases the magazine. It’s caught in a big hand, lifted up, checked. You already know, before he sets it on the dresser top next to your thigh, that the magazine is full of the maximum number of rounds.

You keep it that way — magazine packed, a round in the chamber — because it’s supposed to be helpful to you in a pinch. In the wrong hands, it’s the complete opposite.

He pulls the slide back all the way, releases it; the single round hiding in the chamber pops out, clattering to the floor just as the slide snaps back into place. You flinch at the sudden noise, the click of cold metal.

“Leaving a round in the chamber,” he chides. “What did I say? You should be more careful.”

He pulls the slide back again, pushing the slide catch up this time to keep it propped open. The gun looks large like that — expanded, empty, almost bony , like it’s the skeleton of a Dominator. And you suppose the pistol is the skeleton of a Dominator in more ways than one. It’s an inferior version, one with much less substance, much less power. But it’s still a weapon made to kill. Something to be cautious of.

That’s what he’s doing right now — tilting the gun, cocking his head to the side, checking that the feed ramp is clear of any other rounds. And when he’s satisfied that it is — that the gun is no longer loaded — he pushes the catch down so the slide can snap back into place. It’s louder this time, almost makes you jump out of your skin, even though you know it’s coming.

You wonder what else is coming as you watch him grab the full magazine from beside your thigh. He slots the slim rectangle into the gun, hits it up with his palm so it’s seated in place.

Almost ready to shoot. Just a couple more steps to go. And he’s already taking them — gripping the gun in his right hand, pinching the slide in his left to pull it all the way back, the gun angled this time, deliberately , toward you. 

So you can see the top of it. So you can watch as the bullet pops into place. So you can bear witness to him feeding the round from the magazine into the chamber before he lets the slide snap back over it.

So you know that the gun is once again loaded. A bullet waiting in the chamber, patient but hungry — ready to fire. 

He’s made you an audience to the setting of a custom-made trap just for you. Unloading the gun, just to load it again right in front of you. And why is that? Why this exercise in repetition? 

You think you know. It’s so that when he inevitably puts the bullet through you, you’ll know that he was the one who fed the round into the chamber, that he was the one who shot you, that he was the one who took your life.

Full intent to kill. The same intent you’d seen when you first locked eyes with him, back before he caught you.

All that’s left to do now is click the safety off.

You’re already pleading before it can happen. 

“Don’t do this. I’ll behave. I will. You don’t need the gun. I promise.”

“But you needed it,” he says. “You’re even worse than I thought. You really were planning to kill me . ”

“I wasn’t ,” you stammer. “I wasn’t going to kill you. I promise.”

“I really thought you were better than this. But what should I expect from a criminal, right?”

You don’t like that look in his eye — the subtle, almost unrecognizable thrill. 

“I’ll be good for you,” you stammer.

“You’re too obvious.”

He places the barrel on your temple. It’d only take a couple of seconds to release the safety, cock the hammer, pull the trigger. Even less than that, with skilled hands like his. You grimace; a flood of pleas leaves your mouth. Disjointed from your body, removed by your own fear, you listen to them as if they’re coming from someone else. Don’t kill me. Don’t kill me. I’ll do whatever you want.

How pathetic, you think.

He looks like he’s considering it. Weighing his options, analyzing them. But you know now, that no matter what he chooses to do in this moment, he’ll kill you sooner or later. The look on his face gives it away. No heart, you think, no empathy. Not when it comes to people like you, at least. You wonder how many people he’s killed before you. In the grand scheme of things, your life is inconsequential. 

No. Your life is less than inconsequential; it’s a burden. Scum, he’d called you. He’d said, You’re nothing but a parasite. A drain on this society . You’d taken it lightly, then, when there was a way out. But now there’s none; he hates you, wants you dead, and he’ll kill you himself for the world to be rid of you. 

You should’ve taken this more seriously.

He looks into your eyes when he places the gun to your forehead. No empathy, no heart. You release a shaky breath, squeeze your eyes shut, and wait for it.

But it doesn’t come. 

You take several breaths — gasps, really — before you feel the barrel trail to the right, brushing hair out of your face with a tenderness that feels somehow perverse. You keep your eyes closed, shuddering as the cold metal trails down your cheek, down your jaw, further and further until it settles under your chin and nudges your face upward.

You open your eyes already looking into his. And you’re shivering, still mumbling, I’ll be good. I’ll be good.

“Why do you think I’d believe a word that comes out of your mouth?”

“I’m not lying,” you stammer.

He shakes his head, stepping backward. “Get up.”

You pause — confused, terrified, and frozen in place.

“Get off the dresser,” he commands harshly, gesturing between you and the ground with the gun. “ Stand up . Now.”

You obey. Slide off the sticky dresser with limbs that feel like lead. His gaze is too punitive, too intense; you can’t bring yourself to meet it, so you avert your eyes instead, watching his rough hands on the gun. The silence is heavy, thick with fear for what he’s going to do with you with that pistol.

Your pistol.

“Turn around.”

Face to face with your naked figure in the mirror. Small, powerless, and bare, with him towering over you from behind. It’s more terrifying this way, confronting your compromised reflection. The embarrassment on your face, his roaming eyes leaving no single inch of skin on your naked, trembling body left untouched.

You observe the reflection as a bystander, as if the person in the mirror isn’t you, but some unknown, unfortunate criminal who’s run out of luck. If you were a bystander, you could almost laugh at this hapless tableau, and at that poor criminal’s expression of guilt and horror. 

But it’s not funny, not when you see him push the barrel against the back of her head and feel it on yours. That feeling brings you back.

His eyes are just like the gun, you think. They’re as cold as the metal of the barrel.

“Bend over.”

You lower your body over the dresser slowly, trembling. He follows your head down with the gun pressed firmly against the back of your skull —

“Just like that. All the way down.”

— and keeps pushing your head down until your chin is finally resting on the cool wood of the dresser. You look first at your own reflection — your pleading, fearful eyes — and then at his. 

Harsh and unforgiving.

“Put your hands behind your back.”

You shift slightly, feel your wrists tremble against the bare skin of your back.

“Wrists together.”

He pulls the cuffs from his pocket in the mirror. Last time he’d gone for them, you’d broken his nose, caused those two dark streaks of blood above his lip. That feels like an alternate timeline. This one is devoid of hope. He’s further away now; he won’t fall for the same trick again. You don’t have the nerve for a second attempt, and even if you did, the barrel of the gun pressing into your skull would prevent you from jerking your head backward.

As if he can hear you thinking about it, he presses the muzzle harder against your head. Your reflection whimpers. Then there’s the cold metal of the cuffs closing in on your wrist, the click as they catch. You move your wrists just slightly, only to find that there’s no give at all.

He levels his body over yours, pressing up against you. You wince, feeling your arms crushed against your back, your body pushed into the ungiving surface of the dresser. 

And his hard cock twitching against the bare skin of your ass, dripping precum.

All of that and he’s still hard.

No. 

Because of all of that, he’s still hard.

Rock hard, harder than before, dribbling so much precum it’s smearing all over your ass.

He’s sick . Depraved. Each time you think he can’t get worse, he does.

The gun leaves the back of your head, replaced in the same second by his hand. His fingers wrap tight in your hair, tilting your head backward. He watches you pant in the mirror with your neck exposed — your pulse hammering under the skin. It quickens when he places the gun to your right temple, tilting his head to talk softly into your left ear.

“You try anything funny,” he says, “and you’re gonna watch me put a bullet through your skull.” He looks from your face to your reflection in the mirror, pushing the muzzle into your skin. “Understand that?”

“I understand,” you babble pathetically. “I understand. I’m not gonna try anything.”

“Can I trust you?” It’s almost mocking. Almost.

“Yes,” you whimper. You’re saying whatever comes to your tongue, spewing nonsense — Yes, trust me. Trust me, please. I won’t do anything. I promise. I’ll be good. I told you I would. There’s nothing I can do now. You don’t have to worry about me. 

“ Now? You couldn’t do anything from the start.” 

He disentangles his fingers from your hair, letting your head droop forward until your chin is resting on the cool wood of the dresser again.

“And why would I worry?” he continues, studying your tearful expression as he returns the barrel to its place at the back of your skull. “One false move and I’ll blow your brains right out of your pretty head. And you’ll get a front row seat. It’s as simple as that.”

The cruelty is point-blank. 

“Are you gonna kill me?” you sob.

“Depends,” he says. “Are you gonna cooperate?”

“Yes.”

“Really?” 

He’s bending over your body, with one hand holding the gun to your head and the other trailing down the curve of your ass. He pauses to squeeze the soft flesh, before bringing his fingers between your thighs.

He’s sick, he’s depraved.

And you?

You’re wet.

You’re sick, you’re depraved. You’re terrified, trembling with fear — but you’re soaking wet with a gun flush to your skull and the promise of death a trigger’s pull away.

“I promise.” 

His fingers brush over your pussy, and the murmur becomes a moan.

You’re so deprived of that touch that your eyelids flutter as soon as you feel it. Your back arches, bringing your ass up, on instinct — the need, the craving to give his fingers an easier way in.

“That’s right… ” he muses, running his fingers over your wet slit. He looks up from your pussy to the mirror, watching — through heavy lashes, eyes sleepy with desire — as you whimper. Terror and desire compete for dominance, as if to see which can get you wetter. “... I guess you’ve been begging me to fuck you for a while now.”

With his eyes on you in the mirror, he grazes his fingers over your clit, massages it until you’re moaning.

“Oh, you’re wet ,” he says, slipping two fingers into your pussy — fucking them in and out, teasing — “you want to take my dick with a gun to your head, don’t you?”

Yes. Please.

It’s a mumble that devolves into a series of lewd moans; those are drowned out by louder, lewder sounds. The sloppy, wet noises of your pussy clenching on his moving fingers. In the mirror, your fluttering eyelashes allow you short glimpses of the desire growing on his face, his attentive gaze flitting between his fingers and your contorted face. You push your ass out further, and he fucks his fingers deeper.

Filth spills from your mouth. A series of hazy, desperate pleas. Yes yes yes, oh god, I want to take your cock, I want you so fucking bad, give it to me, I’ll be a good girl, please, I want to cum on you again.

Maybe that’s what prompts him to drop his slacks a little further, to mold his hips to your ass as he leans over your body. His right hand is steady on the gun — not wavering, not moving an inch. His eyes drop to watch his left hand guide his cock to your entrance, until the leaking tip is nudging against your clenching slit. He rests it there, watching you tremble and whimper, with the cuffs digging into your wrists.

He leans over you until his entire body is pressed onto yours. Until he’s dwarfing you, enveloping you with his weight on his left elbow. His left hand comes to your face; his slick-covered middle and ring fingers rest on your lips, while his thumb and pinky grip your jaw.

You open your mouth without prompting, sucking and licking his fingers while you wait for him to move. But he keeps you in limbo — paused, with his hard dick twitching right outside your hole, the gun digging into your skull, and his eyes on your reflection while he talks into your ear.

“Look at that. My little criminal takes it all with no complaints,” he says, squeezing your jaw. “Rehabilitation’s that easy? All you have to do is fuck the deviant out? That’s real cute.”

“Please— oh ,” you slur, the murmur cut short when he sinks in without warning. But he just gives you a little bit, just stretches your hole out around the thick tip, even though your pussy clamps down and tries to suck him in further. He holds back, watching your reaction in the mirror. The way you drool around his fingers, the way your eyes roll back.

Oh my god, you’d say, oh fuck, it feels good, but you can’t get it out around his fingers; the butchered words turn into little gasps of pleasure while he fucks you with the tip. Shallow thrusts in and out of your needy hole — that’s all you get.

But he gives you all of his fingers, pushes them into your mouth to the knuckle, until they’re poking at your throat and making you gag. And when you try to pull your head back, gasping for air, he pushes the gun mercilessly into the back of your skull, forcing your face forward onto his fingers.

“You keep being good for me,” he pants, watching you gag on his fingers in the mirror while he fucks the tip in and out of your pussy. “If your mouth gets smart again, I’ll give you more to choke on.”

He’s withholding what you really need. What you really need are deep thrusts, for him to bury the full length of his cock in you. He’s so big you know he’d hit all the right spots. But he’s barely giving you anything. He pulls the tip of his cock out of your wet, quivering hole only to push it right back in — barely. He stretches your pussy out over and over with thrusts so shallow they only massage the spot just past your entrance.

But you’re so sensitive, so worked up and desperate, that those little movements are sending you right to the edge. You’re babbling and choking on his fingers, and he’s panting against the side of your face. Breaths hot, voice catching — Such a good pussy. It’s so tight in here.

Your body goes rigid; your back arches, your wrists straining against the metal of the cuffs as the friction in your pussy sends you right to the edge. You slur a warning around his fingers and his reflection, looking as worked up as yours, responds, Yeah? Yeah?

There’s that unmistakable lilt in his voice, the sound of rising pleasure threatening to crest.

And then — right before you crash over — he pulls his cock out of your tightening pussy, breathing hard.

The tension inside of you dissipates into a low buzz. He takes his fingers out of your mouth and rises, keeping the gun to your head while he looks down at you. You’re restrained, panting, with spit on your chin and tears in your eyes; the pleasure is gone, replaced by a dull throbbing in your clit. You were right there, and he ruined it.

You sob. “Please. I’m dying for it.”

“ Dying for it?”

He removes the gun from your head, and you take a shaky breath of relief as you watch his reflection tuck the gun into the back of his slacks. And now that his hands are free, he grabs at your restrained arm, pulling you up off the dresser, before spinning you to face him. You nearly trip over your own feet, wincing; your arms are aching from being pinned behind your back.

“Why are you crying?” he asks. “Does it hurt?”

You nod tearfully.

“That’s too bad.”

But there’s no sympathy in his voice. 

He lifts you onto the dresser, spreads your thighs wide first, and then his hands grab at your calves, lifting them to prop your legs up on the dresser. And now — knees spread wide, feet hanging over the edge of the dresser, hands cuffed behind your back — you’re truly compromised. 

“You want to get fucked?” he asks.

“Yes, I—”

Your breath catches in your throat when his fingers close around your neck. His mouth meets yours. And he leans you further and further back — face forcing yours backward, hand on your throat, tongue in your mouth — until the back of your head is resting against the mirror.

You whine into his mouth — Please.

And he pulls away, props his weight up on his left hand, bent over you as he pulls the gun from the back of his slacks.

“You want to cum again?”

A tearful nod, because that’s all you can manage. 

He brings the gun up. Spits on it. A big glob, dropping from his mouth, hitting the smooth barrel. 

Your words come out mousy and small — What are you doing?

He tilts the gun, rotating it until the barrel is coated in spit.

“I’ve got something for you to cum on,” he says.

Before you can complain, he’s leaning over. He spits messily on your pussy. Twice — once on your clit, and then again, on your clenching, fluttering hole.

It’s terrifying, the prospect of this weapon — made to rip through flesh, made to tear people apart — inside of you. You watch the scene between your thighs, a scene in which prospect nears reality , with a sort of morbid anticipation.

He brings his thumb to the safety and switches it off.

Stomach drops, head spins — you can’t breathe.

You can see that little red dot that’s usually hidden when the safety’s on. 

Red means dead. 

And you can see it. The red dot is right there —  the safety is off — and you’re dead if he puts that gun inside of you.

Because if he accidentally pulls the trigger —

No.

He hasn’t cocked the hammer. And the Beretta —  if the hammer isn’t pulled back manually by the wielder — has a double action trigger. A double action trigger is hard to pull. It takes a lot of pressure. A slip of the finger wouldn’t fire off the round in the chamber. There’ll be no accidents. He’ll have to pull the trigger with a purpose if he wants to bury a bullet in your womb.

But will he? Will he put the gun inside of you and pull the trigger on purpose? With intent?

You don’t know. You can’t process this, can’t think. There’s a ringing in your head. A pounding. Fear expanding in your skull, pushing outward, like it’s trying to escape.

And while you grapple with terror, your pussy drips — insides wet, trembling, and ready for the gun.

The barrel comes down. Pushes through your folds, the metal cool and slick, smearing his spit all over your cunt.

You’re dizzy. Breathing hard. Hyperventilating, watching him rub the gun over your puffy, engorged clit. You shudder — half fear, half pleasure — as he drags the barrel over your sloppy pussy. It gets warm. Heated by the friction, dragged against you over and over.

And when the metal is hot, when it’s wet with his spit and your juices, he slides the barrel down. Slow. All the way down, until it’s positioned over your waiting entrance.

You’re already stretched from being fucked by the tip of his cock. You’re already dripping wet from being teased so much. And from being terrified —  you’re ready .

He nudges the barrel into your pussy, and your greedy hole sucks it in.

And now it’s inside, stretching your walls, some parts of the metal warm, some cool. One hard pull of his finger away from blowing your insides to pieces. It makes you reel; it makes you gasp and shake, and from above, he watches, cold.

But still, your pussy takes the gun deeper. And deeper and deeper , until the entire barrel disappears completely into your cunt.

“How’s your pussy feel? Good?”

You’re silent —  horrified — watching him pull the gun back out. Glistening wet. And he continues to talk, to tease, cruel words buzzing around in your head, cutting through the fear —

Yeah. Looks like it.

You let out something between a moan and a sob. Pleasure’s building up; you’re trembling, you’re scared, so you squeeze your eyes shut.

But he reaches his free hand up, tangles his fingers in your hair, and forces your face down.

Open your eyes. Watch how well your pussy takes it. 

So you watch your hole swallow the barrel up again — all the way to the trigger guard, metal buried in your cunt as far as it’ll go.

See how wet you are? 

Little sobs escape your mouth; your eyelashes flutter, but you force your eyes open. Keep them glued on the gun as he fucks you with it, the trigger guard hitting your slit each time he pushes it in. All the way — over and over and over. And you flinch every single time.

You’re waiting. At any moment, he might act on the intent in his eyes. He might put his finger on the trigger, he might pull, he might send a bullet ripping through soft, wet flesh. He might —

He shifts, angling the barrel upward. It changes the feeling — intensifies it. The hard metal drags over the front wall of your cunt, stimulating the most sensitive spots. And despite all that fear — because of all that fear — you feel another orgasm building up.

You’re moaning. Hazy. Oh, god. It feels so good.

You’re sobbing, too. I’m scared, I’m scared.

But your pussy clamps on the barrel like it’s trying to milk the bullets from the gun. And the metal — hot all the way around now, from the friction of rubbing against your tensing insides — makes your toes curl over the edge of the dresser.

“Are you gonna cum on this gun?” he says. “Or should I pull the trigger?”

You whimper — “I’m gonna cum. I’m gonna cum.”

You’re already almost there; the pleasure’s heightening. The gun’s at just the right angle to stimulate your needy insides, fucking over all the spots that make you moan. You’ve never felt something this terrifying. This good.

“Good.”

He lets go of your hair, slips a hand under your leg and lowers his face until he’s between your thighs. You think the intensity has already reached its apex. But you don’t know real pleasure until he latches his mouth onto your clit, sucking it and tonguing it while he continues to fuck the glistening barrel of the gun in and out of your pussy.

He’s mean. He’s relentless. He lets up only to spit on the gun or on your cunt.

The pleasure is too much, the thrill — the knowledge that he could kill you at any moment.

That familiar tension is building again, terror and pleasure knotting up heavily in your lower stomach, tightening as the gun penetrates your insides, as his tongue circles your clit. Over and over.

 The feeling starts in the arches of your feet, your toes twitching and curling over the edge of the dresser at the same time that your walls start to spasm around the gun. 

You sob. Please. I’m cumming again, I’m — 

A shudder runs through your entire body; the tension releases with a new kind of intensity — pleasure and horror overwhelming you all at once. You try to stay still while you cum, grappling with the feeling as your pussy contracts. You’re afraid that if you move too much, he’ll pull the trigger.

But it feels too good — the warmth flooding your lower stomach, your cunt convulsing on the barrel as he fucks it in and out of you, his tongue massaging your pulsing clit. So you ride it out. Trembling, seeing stars — back arched, wrists straining against the handcuffs behind you.

Fucked until you’re spent.

Fucked until the gun is covered in your cum. He takes it out, dripping wet, only when your cunt stops clenching around it.

He rises, looking down on you as you catch your breath. You’re gasping between sobs, silently thanking whichever of his cruel whims is keeping you alive. He’s hazy in your vision, incorporeal almost, the edges of his body blurry and swimming. You blink slowly, and when you open your eyes again, the wet barrel is nudging against your lips.

“Do I really have to prompt you? You made a mess, now clean it up.”

Demurely, looking up at him through heavy eyelashes, you take the barrel in your mouth. Whimpering, trembling. It tastes like metal, like cum. The two tastes combine on your tongue, almost bitter.

“Do a good job.”

He pulls your hips toward him with his free hand; your ass slides forward easily on the top of the dresser — it’s slippery, slick with sweat and cum. But he shoves the gun deeper into your mouth to keep the back of your head pressed up against the mirror, forcing more of the barrel in until the trigger guard is pressed against your lower lip. The muzzle hits the back of your throat, and you gag around it.

His dick is resting against your pussy again, precum oozing from the tip and dripping onto your skin.

“You want to cum again?”

You let out a pathetic, garbled yes around the gun.

“Then suck it right.”

You don’t get his approval until your mouth is tight on the gun, until your lips are trembling around the barrel. But when you do get it —  just like that, that’s perfect, how’s it taste? — your pussy responds to that praise, oozing all over the shaft of his dick.

And like some kind of some sadistic reward, he starts to fuck the gun in and out of your mouth, smearing spit all over your lips. Your eyes brim with tears, but he only stops when you’re gagging so hard that you can’t breathe.

While you’re gasping for air, swallowing your terror, he’s asking — ”Have you had enough yet? Or do you want me to fuck you for real now?”

Just what you asked for. What you’ve been waiting for. Needing. You offer a hazy nod with your eyes fixed on the gun, watching your own spit drip from the muzzle.

“Now, I’ll give you my dick,” he says, “but I want to hear my insolent little criminal say please. ”

Please.

That earns you the tip of his cock in your oozing hole, his long fingers around your throat, pressing lightly into your pulse, and the spit-slick muzzle of the gun pressed straight into the middle of your forehead. 

You watch his eyes as he fucks you with the tip. The way they go hazy as he looks down, watching his cock part your pussy. His fingers close on your throat when he slips in a little deeper. They’re not incredibly tight, but it’s enough pressure to make your head float, to make your fingertips — which were already tingling from the cuffs — go numb behind your back. That buzz makes you wetter on his dick, more sensitive.

Maybe it’s that high that removes you from the fear. Maybe that’s where you get the nerve to babble for the whole thing. Even as he pushes the muzzle into the front of your skull, you’re begging for more cock.

Please.

This time, it earns you a deep stroke. Not the full thing at once, not yet , but it’s enough to make you gasp for air that you can’t even get with his fingers pressing into your throat. You cough, choke, watching his dark eyelashes flutter now that he’s deeper. And your eyes — they’re hard to keep open, too heavy with pleasure — but you find them focusing on his finger, the way it comes to hover over the trigger.

He pulls his thumb back suddenly — takes it off the metal frame, brings it slightly back. Rests it on the hammer of the gun.

You start to blabber in a strangled voice. What are you doing? Don’t — don’t — !

There’s the click of cold metal. His thumb pulling the hammer of the gun all the way back.

You let out a shaky sob.

Without the hammer manually cocked, it’s a double action trigger: hard to pull, hard to shoot with just a slip of the finger. But now — with the hammer cocked — it’s a single action trigger. A light, easy trigger pull — that’s all it’d take to fire off the round in the chamber. To send it ripping through your skull.

He fucks the tip of his dick into you with the safety off and the hammer pulled. With one hand squeezing your throat and the other pressing the gun into the dead center of your forehead. With full intent to kill all over his face.

But his expression is starting to get hazy. He’s getting wrapped up in the feeling as he starts to fuck you a little harder. He’s not paying enough attention — that’s terrifyingly clear. That expression is far away, but his finger is so close to the trigger, too close, a hair away from burying a bullet in your skull. And when he slides back out of your cunt, panting, it gets closer , resting lazily on the curved metal.

You’ve never been so terrified, so sensitive, or so wet.

And you’ve never been so desperate. So it feels merciful when he asks, obligingly, You want the whole thing? And of course, you stammer for it, and he gives it to you, pushes it in slow and deep — more and more and more of the thick shaft parting your weeping walls until it’s all the way in, nestled in your cunt, heavy and throbbing.

That breathless oh, fuck when he bottoms out makes you clamp down, gets you so wet that it leaves the base of his cock a slippery mess. He rests there for a second, breathing hard. But he doesn’t have to move. You’ll cum without it; you’re already on your way there, just from being stuffed full of his dick at gunpoint. Just from the feeling of him completely buried inside of you like this — gun pressed against your head, cock pressed against your cervix. A sharp feeling inside, half-pleasure, half-pain.

But he moves anyway. Watching him pull his cock back out, slow and wet, brings you that much closer to cumming again. But you don’t want to cum — you want to make it last. But more than that, you’re afraid. He’s too intent: eyes on your pussy, cloudy and dark, sweat on his forehead, making his messy hair stick to his face. Cheeks flushed, teeth on his lip — he’s too far gone. You’re afraid that if you cum, it’ll send him over too. 

And what if he loses control while he does? What if his finger slips? What if he squeezes the trigger?

Well, you know exactly what happens then.

In, then back out again. Harder this time, the dresser shaking beneath you. A sudden stream of fresh blood trickles from his nose, tracing the old path of dried blood before dripping down onto your skin.

You’re holding off, but it gets more difficult when he fucks you faster. When he fucks you harder — more blood from his nose splattering onto your skin, the dresser rocking harder, items on its surface rattling. It gets more difficult the more urgent he gets. And the urgency is rising fast — fingers digging into your throat until your moans come out strangled, his other hand pushing the gun into your forehead until tears leak down your face.

But when he takes his fingers off your throat, licks his thumb, and presses it to your clit to rub it while he fucks you, that’s when it’s hardest to hold off.

And he knows. He sees it; he teases. Gonna cum again? Huh? Already?

A shaky response, unintelligible. Mm - mmhm.

You look him in the eyes while he pounds your little wet hole to filth, dropping his cock in over and over, rubbing your swollen clit until your cheeks are wet with tears. Because everything’s too intense, everything’s too much: too much fear, too much pleasure, too much pain.

“Soon,” you slur. “Gonna cum… I’m gonna cum.”

He’s panting, close, breathy. “Are you sure you want to do that?”

You don’t understand. 

“If I were you,” he says, finger on the trigger, “I’d make this one last a little while longer.”

Your blood runs cold when you get it. What he means. Maybe before you’d deluded yourself into thinking you’d get out of this alive. But now you understand what kind of person he really is, and how cold his blood runs. 

It’s the last one you’re gonna get, he’s saying.

How close the brutal end really is.

You understand: once you cum, it’s done.

So you try to stave off your orgasm. You’re desperate to, crushing the pleasure down like your life depends on it. Because it does. 

But he’s hungry. You can see it on his face. Feeding on the fear that brims in your lower lashes isn’t enough; he wants to make you cum, knows how to do it, so he does — pounding in deep, fucking you hard and mean, the tip of his dick bullying into some sensitive spot deep in your pussy. 

It’s too good to resist, too hard to deny. 

Blood seeps from his nose, thick and dark. And when he cranes his neck to spit on your cunt, the blood drips onto your clit too, warm, and travels down your skin to the brutal rhythm of his thrusts before it’s massaged away by his thumb.

You beg desperately, with tears flooding from your eyes. S-slow down, oh, you’re gonna make me cum, please. Gasping, voice wavering, more desperate the more he strokes over that little spot so deep inside.

And he continues to condescend, licking the blood from his lips —

Right here? Feels good when I fuck you right here? Sensitive little pussy, gets so wet for me. You want to cum on me? You want to get my dick wet? What are you waiting for? I know you can’t last.

You can’t — it’s too good, it’s too good; it’s even better when you see his composure going too. His panting, his belt buckle jingling in his slacks, the sweat glistening on his pecs, the droplets running down his stomach, the pulsing of his cock — it’s all so obscene, it’s just what you need to go hurtling right to the edge. And you play one last desperate game of body versus mind that you’re doomed to lose, that you’re losing by the moment, chest heaving, sweat rolling down your temples, back arching against your will, wrists straining futilely against the cruel metal —

Go ahead and cum on my dick, I know you can’t help it.

“Please — please , I’ll do anyth — fuck!”

Your mouth falls open, the muzzle digs into your skull, and you take one more merciless pound into your cunt before you drop over the edge with a strangled moan.

Your pussy clamps down on his dick, and he shudders hard after the first convulsion — eyelashes fluttering, breathing hard. Then he’s going over too, his orgasm starting a second after yours. But he keeps the merciless rhythm up even when he’s cumming, fucks you through it — shoving his cock in deep, pulling it back out even while he’s shooting cum and you’re clenching on it. He’s still toying with your clit, still pleasuring you even as you both ride the wave. His dick throbs inside, fills you up with spurt after spurt of hot cum — and your pussy keeps clenching, each contraction swallowing his load up, sucking it out of him to pull it in deep. Your body takes everything he gives, greedy — milks him until he has nothing left.

He fucks you until he’s empty; you take it until you’re full.

Until it’s all done.

Then, when it’s done — he stalls above you with a heaving chest, dripping blood and sweat onto your body. 

You shudder. Small under his gaze. The fog in your head is starting to clear, and you’re thinking about that promise — It’s the last one you’re gonna get —  and its implication.

Above you, he’s dark. Dark hair, dark eyes, dark lashes, everything so dark and cold, like midnight in winter. A moonless night.

It’s done, and it’s over with, and you’re coming down with tears in your eyes. The pleasure is gone. All that’s left is terror, so stark and so frigid that it feels like your bones might shatter.

But the barrel of the gun burns hot on your forehead.

So you start to beg — cutting the silence with a shaky voice. “I’ll do anything,” you say, trying the handcuffs. But they won’t budge around your numb wrists, and the panic rises. “Anything for you to let me go. What do you want? I have money. Weapons. I have a guy who can smuggle you out of the country. You can escape the Bureau. Just let me go.”

He just studies you for a quiet moment, still buried so deep inside, as the heat between your bodies goes cold. And then, indifferent to your panic-stricken offers —

“This isn’t a negotiation. Never was. Let you go? You served your purpose.”

“ Please. ”

But this time, begging gets you nothing.

“You even had some fun while you were at it,” he says cruelly. “Didn’t I tell you I was generous?”

You whimper, but he regards you straight-faced.

“You think you deserve generosity? You think you deserve mercy?”

You sob. You’d shake your head, but it’s wedged too tightly between the muzzle of the gun and the mirror’s surface. In a matter of moments, when a bullet tears through the back of your skull, the mirror will be painted with a different kind of reflection of you: brain matter, the neurons responsible for every decision you’ve made up to this tragic, damned moment.

“ Mercy ,” he muses, thoughtful. “That’s not even my call, anyway. What was it you called me? An errand boy? Then you understand what I do. I follow orders. I clean up where it’s needed.”

“Look. Let’s stick together,” you beg. Frantic. “You and me, we’re the same, I understand you—”

“You know,” he interrupts drily, “maybe I should tell the folks at the Bureau that they were wrong about criminals like you. It looks like you do have some use after all.”

“ No. Don’t. You don’t have to do this.”

Around you, everything is completely and utterly still. As if the world is awaiting your demise like the audience of some timeless, inevitable tragedy, the kind in which the protagonist is doomed from the very beginning. The kind in which the audience will always say, Should have done this. Should have done that. 

And you? Should have fought harder with the knife, should have gone for the gun a second time. Shouldn’t have underestimated him, shouldn’t have mistaken a wolf for a dog. But if you had known that, then you’d have known that you never really stood a chance from the start.

If I’m a dog, what does that make you? he’d asked earlier.

And you’d answered, Something helpless. Something a wolf swallows whole. A rabbit, wide-eyed and jittery, and awaiting a death that is only natural.

“I’ve gotta hand it to you,” he says. “You put up a good fight.” Right in front of your face, his finger moves a fraction of an inch, grazing over the trigger. “But you said it yourself. I’m just a dog. So you understand, don’t you…?” 

You feel, suddenly, very small, as if the world is closing in around you. Tinier and tinier it gets, until all the matter in the universe is constrained in a little pinpoint — until all the heaviness of the world rests in that little circle where the muzzle of the gun presses into your forehead.

“... I’m just doing my job.”

You squeeze your eyes shut, and the world is already black when he pulls the trigger.

/ / / / / / /

Birds chirping.

A heavy sigh.

A dull thunk . Metal on wood.

The sound of something cracking. A joint, maybe, a wrist moving in its socket. A hand shaken out after being kept in one position for too long.

“Damn.”

The pain in the center of your forehead, at that little spot where the muzzle was pressed into your skin, subsides until all that’s left there is a dull thrumming sensation.

A big hand envelops your face; calloused fingers turn your jaw tenderly left, right, and then back again.

You crack an eye open, studying him.

His discerning gaze is intent on your face. His eyes narrow a little; he frowns, concern defrosting his features as he searches your skin for the slightest signs of damage.

The chase is different every time. So is what comes after — the culmination of all the exhilaration, the way you take your adrenaline out on each other. But what comes at the very end of each little game — this little inspection you could call a postmortem routine , if you wanted to be morbid about it — is familiar and well-rehearsed.

He checks your body for damage in the same way every time, with care and precision, methodical.

You’d even call this routine comfortable if it weren’t for the leftover jitters. Everything else about your little games aside, the fear is always real. In those moments, you really are going to die. You’ve died at his hands over and over; he’s died at yours, too. The adrenaline is always real, the rush. The fear of death. That’s the entire point: to assume a role.

And Kougami is a good actor.

He shakes his hand out again. He doesn’t complain, never does, but it’s probably cramped up from holding the gun for too long.

“Was it really that heavy?” you tease, but the little tremor in your voice remains. “The fakes are pretty light compared to the real thing. I think you’re just being dramatic, Kou.”

He meets your eyes, unamused. “Do you want to hold the gun next time?”

“Only if you want to suck on it next time.” You see him suppress a smile, and you grin. “Besides. The metal fakes are better than the plastic ones. Even though they’re heavier. It makes the whole experience more authentic.”

“If you really wanted authentic, I could’ve fucked you with the Dominator,” he quips drily. 

“ That huge thing?” you scoff. And then, “You really think I wouldn’t be into that?” 

Normally, he’d laugh. But right now he’s peeved, so he just snorts. He gets like that whenever things are particularly rough. He gets like that even when you only get a few scrapes — sullen and quiet, mouth pressed in a flat line. 

“What?”

He doesn’t answer, just licks his thumb and uses it to gently wipe something off of your lip. Blood, probably. But if the blood on your face it’s anyone’s, it’s definitely his. He zips up his slacks and steps backward, peering down at you suspiciously — as if to see you from a more critical angle. You know you’ve passed his inspection when his eyes settle on yours and narrow.

“ What? ” you demand.

“You’re all scraped up again.”

“Don’t be grouchy,” you say, and his expression softens a little. “It’s not that bad.”

But he’s still looking down at you like a parent might look at an insolent child, as if he wasn’t in on the entire thing. 

“It’s worse than last time,” he says. “You said you’d be more careful.”

“I was . ”

He raises his eyebrows. “Is jumping through windows your idea of being careful?”

“Well, it doesn’t feel real if we don’t treat it like it’s real ,” you argue.

“Nothing with broken glass next time.”

You capitulate with a weary sigh. “Okay. I dropped the keys somewhere, though. It’s not like I had any other way in.”

“It’s fine,” he says, crouching to open one of the lower dresser drawers. “I shot the lock off, anyway. I’ll board them up for now. Next time we’re back around I’ll fix the door.”

Your hands are still cuffed, but you do your best to scoot off the dresser gracefully. He’s already rising as you do, setting the first aid kit down on the dresser and fixing you with a glare as you land on your feet, unbalanced.

You shuffle around so your hands are facing him. “Would you be so kind?” 

He sighs when you wiggle your fingers, but then there’s the sound of jingling as he digs the keys out of his pocket. A moment later, the cuffs are coming undone. And then you’re free, shaking your wrists off, fingers tingling as blood circulates.

“Let me see them.”

You’ve barely turned all the way back around when he grabs for your wrists, studying them closely even as you protest that they’re fine. He frowns, eyebrows knit together, thumbs running over the imprints in your skin, before turning them over. Both wrists are raw; the left is chafed through.

“You should’ve told me they were cutting you,” he says flatly, shaking his head. “There’s a safe word for a reason.”

“They’re completely fine,” you insist. “I didn’t even notice.” 

He jerks his head left, to the bed. “Sit down.”

The bed creaks when he settles in next to you, the springs old and rusted. He takes his time cleaning your wrists. Thorough and meticulous. Even when he wraps the gauze around your wounds, it’s done with precision.

You think about the two Dominator blasts that missed you by several feet. A wide berth. Terrible aim. That was intentional, of course.

When he’s done with your wrists, he moves on to your legs. He sits on the floor. Sterilizes the pair of tweezers first, while his eyes roam over your skin for damage. Then he’s propping your calf up with a big, rough hand, plucking leftover shards of glass from your skin carefully. First your right leg, then your left, methodical.

Hair in his face, eyes intent — the same look he gets when he’s wrapped up in a case. But this is done with so much care, so much tenderness, that even when the disinfectant bubbles in your wounds, you barely feel anything.

Of all the things the two of you have done together, of all the things the two of you have done to one another, this feels almost too intimate. You get a chill — a sudden wave of bashfulness, and even though he’s seen every inch of you many times over, you cross your arms over your chest.

“Kou…”

You’re going to ask for your shirt, but you remember it’s in tatters. He’s too busy wrapping you up, anyway.

“Almost done,” he murmurs absently. His fingers are swift and expert as they finish bandaging your legs.

It’s done just a few moments later. He skims his hands up the skin left exposed on your calf — light, tender, affectionate. Then he looks upward, sees your crossed arms first, your sheepish face second.

“Oh.”

He averts his eyes politely as he stands, pulling the loose tie from around his neck so he can shrug his shirt off and drape it over your shoulders.

He turns away to give you time to put it on properly, wandering over to the dresser. While you’re putting your arms through the oversized sleeves and rolling up the cuffs, he’s glancing at his reflection and running the back of his hand over the blood under his nose. It doesn’t do much; the blood has long since dried, so he leaves it. Instead, he turns his attention to rummaging through one of the drawers, until he comes out with a pack of Spinels and a little silver lighter with a K on it. 

Your gift to him years ago — a little congratulations for his new start at the MFA, finally unleashed from the world of Inspectors and Enforcers.

Don’t forget where you came from, you’d joked. And he never really did.

You eye out the blood on his unconcerned face in the mirror. 

“I’m sorry about your nose, Kou,” you say sheepishly.

“Don’t worry about that.”

He places a cigarette between his lips. Flicks the lighter to life. Lights up in the mirror, eyes running lazily over your reflection as he takes a long drag. The exhale is equally long, more and more smoke escaping his mouth and hanging heavily in the air until his reflection is shrouded.

When you lose sight of his reflection, he turns to face you, leaning back against the dresser with sweat still glistening on his body. The cigarette rests between two fingers, smoke snaking upward slowly.

“I told you to give it your all this time, didn’t I?” he says, with a slight smile.

The gash on the side of his face looks deep.

“Come here,” you sigh, swiping the first aid kit off the floor before patting the mattress beside you.

He’s obliging; he sits facing you, and you get to work cleaning the blood off of his face. The area under his nose first, and then the gash on his cheekbone. The sight of it makes you wince. It looks painful, but he never flinches when you clean his wounds. He always just watches, quiet and patient, blowing the smoke out of the side of his mouth so it doesn’t obstruct your view.

“Hypocrite,” you murmur. “How can you be mad at me for a few cuts when you’ve got wounds like this?”

He doesn’t answer; he just smiles a little, taking another drag.

You let out an exaggerated sigh. “You tell me to go at you with everything I’ve got, but you take it easy on me every single time. Don’t think I don’t notice.”

He laughs at that, blowing some smoke in your face before directing the rest out of the side of his mouth. “If I didn’t take it easy on you, you’d actually be dead,” he teases.

“I beg to differ,” you argue, adhering a small bandage to the side of his face. “I got you good with that vase this time. It’s hard to catch you off guard like that.”

“It’s almost like practice for the field, isn’t it?” he muses. “Like when we used to spar back in the day. But better.”

You scoff. “ Better? I was really worried for a second. I thought you were gonna stop it but I nailed you right in the head.”

“Hiding behind the door was a good trick,” he laughs. “Anyway, don’t worry about it so much. It’s all part of the game.”

“You were just scolding me for getting a few scrapes.”

“Well…” Now that you’re finished, he rises from the bed, stretching his neck, rolling it on his shoulders. He pauses with his head back, exhales a big puff of smoke upward. “... You’re you. And I can’t have that.”

You roll your eyes. “And you’re you. For all that thinking you do, I can’t believe how reckless you are about yourself. I was being serious when I said you should be more careful.” 

“You think I haven’t thought everything about this through?”

“I’m sure you have. To the most minute detail. Your safety’s just not one of those details.”

He laughs, nursing his cigarette as he rounds the bed. It creaks under his weight when he settles in, the mattress shifting as he reclines on the pillows. Propped up, he slips a hand behind his head, looking thoughtfully up at the ceiling as if there’s something interesting written up there in the peeling paint.

You join him up by the headboard, settling in close. On your stomach, with your hands folded up under your chin, you inhale a smell that’s become so familiar over the years — sweat and grit and cigarettes. Cologne lingering, faint, underneath everything else. All of it’s comforting, familiar; all of it brings back years and years in an instant.

You drape yourself over his chest like a blanket.

He peers down at you through one eye, blowing smoke out to the side again, so it doesn’t cloud your face. But the moments pass, and it builds up, ends up hanging heavy and thick in the air anyway. A little veil around the two of you, shrouding you from the outside world.

It’s always felt a little bit like this. The two of you isolated, misunderstood, off-kilter to everyone but one another. You understand me, and I understand you. A mutual trust through which this mutual agreement was born.

Even in the little roles you play, the understanding breaks through. He’d said it with his lips on yours. Me? I understand you completely. And before he’d pulled the trigger, you’d said it back. You and me, we’re the same.

His face is peaceful. 

“What do you think the Bureau would do if they found out about these little trips out to Crime City?” you ask sleepily.

“After all these years?” He takes a pensive drag. And when he speaks again, the smoke leaves his mouth in little puffs. “They won’t. No scanners here. No trackers on us when we go out, thanks to Shion. The Dominator’s off the grid, also thanks to Shion. The weapons we have are unregistered, and the rest are fakes. It’s a city full of criminals. Even if someone finds out what we do, no one’s gonna risk going back into normal society to report us to the PSB. They’d be arrested or eliminated before they could say anything. And if they did say something…” 

He pauses for a second, mulling it over. “The PSB wouldn’t believe them. Even if for some reason they did, they don’t have the manpower to look into a claim that outlandish.”

“Mm.”

“Besides. This place isn’t technically on the map, so it’s outside of the MWPSB’s jurisdiction anyway. They’d probably have to ask the MFA to investigate. And who’s Hanashiro gonna send?” he smiles sardonically. “Gino? Me?” 

You laugh, listening to the faint crackle of the cigarette as he inhales. “It’s a good thing Shion doesn’t ask questions.”

He looks a little sheepish. “I’m sure she knows what we’re up to. Or has an idea, at least.”

“Couldn’t do it without her.”

“Couldn’t do it without that Psycho Pass of yours,” he says. “The chase would make anyone’s shoot up. You’re just lucky that yours drops so fast. And that you’ll never need any rehabilitation therapy, no matter how high it goes. It’s the only reason we’re able to come out here for a couple days at a time and go straight back.”

You stifle a yawn.

“Lucky you… ” he says, peering downward. “I bet it’s already back to normal.”

“Looks like my days playing criminal are over. At least until next time we’re back in town.”

You feel pleasant, if only a little heavy, a little exhausted. The haze thickens, smoke hanging over the bed, lingering in the warm air.

“What a shame,” he says with a private smile. “You play the role so well.”

You look upward, searching his eyes. They’re still unreadable. Still cryptic. Still even just the slightest bit cold. He’s always thinking about something, but you never know exactly what.

“Why do you like playing Cops and Robbers so much?” you prod.

“You know the answer to that.”

“Don’t tell me you actually miss being an Enforcer,” you tease.

A little puff of amusement. “ Parts of it? Maybe. Being locked up again…?” He shakes his head.

“The chase, then,” you grin. “You really are a dog at heart.”

“That’s not it.” He ignores the jab, lets it slide. Always a little lenient of a smart mouth, especially with you. 

That’s up to a certain point. You found that out the hard way.

“What parts of being an Enforcer do you miss, then?” you ask, already knowing the answer.

“One part of it, really,” he says. “Well. One person. A coworker of mine.”

He’s smiling a little when he slots the cigarette between his lips again. He knows what reaction he’s eliciting, and you’re already rising to the provocation.

“Coworker?” you scoff. “I prefer the term superior . You worked under me.”

“ Preferred , you mean.” He grins, shows teeth. This time, when he takes a drag, he exhales the smoke directly into your face. “And yeah. I guess I did do a lot of work every time I was under you.”

You roll your eyes at the correction and suppress a laugh at the double entendre. “Don’t be annoying.”

“ There’s that attitude. It was bad enough when you were my Inspector. But you know when it’s the worst?”

You play innocent. “When?”

You go for the cigarette — trying to swipe it from his hand, but he holds it out of your reach.

“That attitude is the absolute worst when you play a criminal.”

“Oh, really?” 

The cigarette is still too far to reach, so you throw your leg over his body and straddle him. You lean forward slightly, resting your weight on your splayed out hands. Under them, his chest is warm, slightly sticky with sweat.

There’s a lazy, amused half-smile on his face. Tension lingers in the air. Grows, until it becomes heavy.

“Yeah.”

He puts a hand on the back of your neck and squeezes slightly before pulling your face down. Closer to him. You yield, let him pull you forward until there’s just a sliver of space left between your face and his. And he leaves you there for a moment, lets you hang in the thick air like the smoke, before his other hand brings the cigarette to your mouth. You take it between your lips, and his eyes linger there, watching your mouth close on the cigarette, watching you inhale, slow and deep.

“You know how much of a pain you are?”

You grin at that, blowing smoke into his face until it’s clouded. It dissipates slowly; when he comes back into view, his smile is a little deeper. And his hand is leaving the back of your neck, skimming down your back, before squeezing your ass softly.

“I think you like it,” you say, looking down at him while you smoke his cigarette.

His hands are free now, elbows thrown lazily back over the pillows. His smile is private, but his eyes are curious. They study your body, analyze it. The unbuttoned dress shirt hangs loosely over your form, and his eyes devour every inch of skin that’s visible under it.

He looks upward. “You really think so?”

“I know so.”

You inhale from his cigarette, and he watches intently.

“If there’s one thing you miss from your Enforcer days… ” you say, exhaling, grinding your hips down, “... it’s being my little dog. ”

Between your legs, under your weight, his dick is getting hard again, pressing up against you through his slacks.

“Yeah?” he asks. “What else?”

He’s nonchalant, even when you’re in control. You find it infuriating. So you hold the cigarette between your lips and shrug the dress shirt off, letting his eyes roam while you talk.

“You miss fucking on the job,” you say, taking a drag. And this time, you put a little more disdain in your voice when you speak, because you know it gets him off. “You miss getting your dick wet after every mission.”

You lean over, bringing your tits closer to his body, watching his eyelids lower a little as you place the cigarette back in his mouth. 

He inhales with his eyes fixed on yours. 

“You never could keep your dick in your pants, could you?” you condescend. “I bet you miss when I let you fuck me in the backseat of the squad car. I bet you miss fucking me on all the paperwork I told you to take care of. How’d you ever get anything done when you were so busy being such a horny, disgusting pervert to your boss ?”

That earns you a crooked grin around the cigarette. “Keep going.”

“My filthy criminal of a subordinate,” you deign. “How depraved. Bending me over the desk every chance you got because you only had the workday to fuck the frustration out before they locked you back up for the night.”

He laughs softly. “Can you blame me, boss? You were such a little hardass. I had to take what I could get.”

“I guess I was a little hard on you,” you pout. “But you always fucked me the hardest after getting reprimanded. Why was that, Kou?”

“Could’ve been a coincidence.” 

“You told me you don’t believe in coincidences. Not after being a detective.”

“So what conclusion does that bring you to, Inspector?” he asks, amused.

“I think you like a little attitude,” you say, grinding down on his dick again, to find it fully hard — thick and hot through the fabric. “Or a lot.”

He grins, smoke flooding from his nostrils. “I guess you caught me.”

“I guess so.”

Then you’re leaning all the way over, pressing your tits to his chest, pressing your lips to his throat, leaving a little kiss there. When he shudders, you put your tongue on his throat — taste his pulse for a moment, the pounding of his heart under his skin, before you start to lick downward.

He watches you trail your tongue down his abdomen — eyes going cloudy, each smoke-filled exhale shaky. Sweat from his skin collects on your tongue, salty. You descend further, down until your tongue is skimming over his happy trail, and you’re squeezing his hard cock through his damp slacks.

Kougami is good at teasing. He’s good at withholding . From you, and from himself. He’ll never tell you how badly he’s aching for it. But the eagerness is still there if you look for it. In the little lift of his hips, the way he makes it easier for you to pull his slacks down his thighs and take his dripping cock out.

It’s there in his foggy expression — the cigarette sitting precariously between slightly parted lips, eyes half-lidded and sleepy. But he’s still attentive; his gaze tracks every movement, fixing on your tongue as it darts out to lick up the sticky trail of precum dripping down the shaft of his dick.

He’s always sensitive. Always responsive. His hips buck up, first when you lick the tip, and then again when you take it in your mouth.

He shudders. Lets out a breathy, catching sigh full of smoke. The fog in the air thickens.

Strands of hair fall in your face, but he swipes them away, gathering them in one hand while you bob your head on his cock. He doesn’t push; he never pushes. He just watches, hazy and relaxed, while you swallow his dick, smoking with one hand tangled lightly in your hair. The other elbow is propped back on the pillows, moving every so often to bring the cigarette to his mouth.

You can hear the pleasure in each deep inhale, the crackling of the cigarette as you suck the taste of yourself off of his cock. The hazy air is getting warm, filling with pleasured sighs. You tighten your lips on the sensitive, leaking tip, moving up and down until he rewards you with a little moan.

He lets the cigarette rest between his lips, dropping his head back onto the pillows. Smoke swirls upward and into the air above his face as his chest rises and falls, faster and faster the deeper you take his dick into your mouth.

He lifts his head from the pillow when he feels the tip prodding at your throat, watches you, bleary — inhaling, with his hand light in your hair. You take it further, until your throat stretches around the head of his dick. And then you force your face all the way down — swallowing it until your mouth is wrapped around the throbbing base and the tip is lodged deep, leaking precum into your throat.

Once you’re down, you stay there, listening to his breaths stall.

“ Fuck. ” 

The word comes out muffled around the cigarette. It comes out choked, punctuated by a short puff of smoke; the rest is held in his lungs.

You gag with his cock buried deep in your throat. His eyes roll back; he groans, releases the full exhale, and smoke comes pouring out of his mouth. But you stay down until you can’t breathe — eyes filling with tears, only pulling off when you finally gag again, leaving his dick glistening and covered in spit.

.“C’mere,” he slurs.

He helps you up. Hands gentle, eyes sleepy, watching as you straddle his lap again. This time, you sit on his cock, pressing it down flat between your pussy and his stomach. He takes a deep drag as he watches you lean forward. When you get close, he pulls the cigarette from his lips and waits with bated breath — the smoke lingering in his mouth, his throat, his lungs. And then you’re slotting your lips onto his, parting them to slip your tongue into his mouth, and he’s breathing the smoke into your mouth between lazy, sloppy kisses.

You swallow the smoke from his mouth until yours is full of it. He takes another drag as you pull back, watching you exhale. His eyes travel downward. Your face first, then your tits, and then down, to where his cock is pressed down under your pussy. His foggy gaze lingers there as you start to grind your hips. Forward, back. A little puddle of precum escapes the tip of his dick, smearing all over his stomach.

“Look what a mess you’re making,” you tease.

His brows furrow up at that, smoke pouring out from gritted teeth on the next pleasured exhale. The air in the room is hot now, acrid. And he’s intent, watching you drag your wet pussy over his twitching dick until it’s coated in your slick.

You balance your weight on your hands, feel his heart pounding in his ribcage.

One last deep inhale. You feel it filling his lungs, feel his chest expanding under your hands. He holds it in for longer this time. He keeps his lungs full, even as he reaches over to put the cigarette out on the ashtray that rests on the bedside table. Even as he settles back into the pillows, hands now free to grip your hips — fingers long, spanning around and digging into the fat of your ass — he’s holding his breath.

Even as he guides your hips back and forth, helping you smear the wetness from your pussy all over his cock, he’s depriving himself of air. It’s deliberate. You can see the smoke swirling just inside his lips, held hostage.

A glutton for punishment.

You can feel it coming, so you pick up your speed, roll your hips faster. His dick is starting to twitch; he’s close, eyes locked between your legs — watching you slide forward and back, his cock nestled wet and tight between your pussy and his stomach. His fingers tighten, grabbing at your ass to help guide your hips back and forth.

And he’s still holding the smoke in. He must be running out of breath.

But that’s the whole point. He’d told you once that that’s when it feels best: right when he’s about to run out of breath, right as his head starts to cloud. Sometimes you choke him — riding him with two hands tight around his throat and your feet planted on the mattress, watching his eyes roll back as he starts to cum — but sometimes he finds a way to deprive himself. He’s always been resourceful, after all. Self-sufficient.

But there’s one thing that’ll always finish him off.

“Look at you,” you condescend. Disdainful. “Suffocating yourself to get off.”

His mouth drops open. A little pant, a little puff of smoke, a little right there . An ah, fuck. And then a choked moan comes out, shrouded in all the smoke he was holding in his lungs. His dick throbs under your pussy, a needy groan spills from his mouth, and he bucks his hips up. And then he’s cumming, panting as thick spurts of milky liquid coat his abs. Line after line of sticky white. You keep moving, from the base to the tip and then over it, feeling some of his cum shoot out against your pussy, warm and sticky, before you smear it back down the pulsing shaft.

He likes it when you tease him through it. You’re so messy. Does it feel good to cum all over yourself? Huh?

The answer is always breathless. Yeah, this pussy always makes me cum, always makes me feel so good.

You rub him through it until he’s done. Covered in sweat, breaths heavy, with cum all over his stomach.

“Look at you,” you say. “What a mess.”

The same thing he’d said to you back on the dresser.

You dip your fingers in his cum until they’re dripping. Swipe as much of it up in one go as you can, before hovering them over his mouth. It’s repayment for earlier; he knows that, expects that. A droplet hits his lip, but he’s already opening his mouth, already sucking your fingers clean, already pulling you down into a kiss by the back of the neck, with cum still hot on his tongue.

It’s an exchange , because it’s always an exchange between the two of you. The wax and wane of power, from you, to him, to you, and back again. Over and over. That’s how it is: give and take.

But Kougami is more give than take. He’s obsessive, especially when it comes to repayment . He’ll reciprocate every action twofold. 

So you’re not surprised when he adjusts under you, directing his dick to your entrance again, while his cum still lingers on your tangled tongues. You’re not surprised that he’s still hard, that he’s guiding the tip of his dick to your pussy even though the sensitivity is enough to make him shudder when he slips inside.

He guides you down slowly, with his breaths hitching and his hands light on the flesh of your ass. The first groan comes when he bottoms out, snug in your cunt, and the second comes when you pull away to nestle your face into the crook of his neck.

He’s always a little sensitive there. And whenever the two of you fuck like this — the both of you worn out, exhausted — you think he tastes the best. You run your tongue over his skin lazily, tasting the slight tang of salt on his throat while you let him take control again. He guides your ass up and down, slowly at first, and then a little faster. Your pussy glides over his cock easily, sopping wet and greedy.

His pulse pounds, quickens with the rhythm of your hips; you can feel it racing on your tongue first, and then, when you start to suck at his throat, you can feel it against your lips. While he moans, you’re slurring soft encouragements against the skin. Just like that. Harder. Faster. Make me cum and then put another load in me.

“God. You’re killing me.”

But he obliges you, fucking you the way you want — planting his feet on the mattress to drill his dick up into you, hard and fast and needy . One sound layered over another in the warm, thick air: your soft moaning on his throat, the metal of his belt clanging, the bed frame creaking. 

And now the sound of his voice, too. Foggy. Rub your clit for me.

You snake your hand down, into the little space between his abdomen and yours. It’s sticky; cum and sweat and squirt, evidence of all of that pleasure, his and yours. The feeling is building up again already, that quick, even quicker when you press your fingers to your puffy clit and rub.

It’s coming for him, too; you can feel it in his feverish hands, the way they move to your waist and squeeze , keeping you in place so he can thrust up harder.

You tease. Are you really gonna cum in me again? Do you even have anything left?

He buries his cock in deep, panting, Yeah, I have more for you, I always have more for you.

But he’s struggling to get the words out, and the pleasure is thick in his voice; his orgasm is coming up fast. He’s struggling to hold off, but you know he wants you to go over first, because he always wants you to cum first. And you’re close — breaths catching, fingers flicking your wet clit faster, your walls trembling around his cock.

But he’s close too, and getting closer as you suck and kiss his neck; his sleepy moans heighten, his voice vibrating his skin under your lips.

You were already so sloppy, but his hard thrusts are making a mess of your pussy, splitting your cum-drenched insides open. Thick liquid escapes your ruined hole, leaking down the shaft of his dick. You’re so full of cum, but you want more; he promised you more, and that thought brings you to the edge again.

He bottoms out again with a lazy moan, hitting some deep spot that makes you gasp. Taking his cum that deep, getting pumped full of another load — just the thought of it makes you cum; you go over murmuring against his neck with your fingertips trembling on your messy clit.

He fucks you through it, still holding off while you cum around his dick. But he’s right there too, squeezing at your waist when your walls clamp down and contract, shuddering when your teeth close in on his throat. It’s when you bite that he finally lets go, thrusts going shaky, panting while he fills you up again — cum hot and sticky in your cunt, overflowing, so obscenely full of it that his last load comes seeping out around his dick with each thrust.

You collapse onto his chest when it’s done, spent and buzzing and limp. 

His body rises and falls under yours, his pulse drumming, slowing gradually against your skin. The exhaustion takes over; it floods your limbs, makes them heavy. You listen to his heartbeat slow, feel his hands running tenderly over your sides and your back.

You peer upward, at his pensive face.

“What are you thinking about?”

“Picking up those shelves we knocked over in the alley.”

“I’ll go with you.”

He murmurs something, then falls quiet. You drop your head back onto his chest, let your eyes flutter shut.

It’s silent. Peaceful. There’s just your breathing, and his, and the smell of sex and cigarettes linging in the hot, sticky air.

“All versions,” you murmur sleepily.

“Hm?”

“I like all versions of you. I liked you back then, and I like you now. Past you, present you. As an Inspector, as an Enforcer. And everything else. Every version of you is a little different. But they’re all good. I like them all.”

He’s silent for a moment, breathing deeply.

Beyond the bedroom, through the broken glass of the front window, the sounds of the city flood in. Naked, vulnerable, in the middle of a city full of criminals — but you’re safer here than anywhere.

A kiss on the top of your head, a tender squeeze to the back of your neck.

“Every version is yours,” he says, finally.