Archive of Our Own ^beta

They’re on a stupid adventure that has something to do with a murder mystery in a gigantic, haunted library the first time anyone notices anything. Everyone is huddled around an ancient book, the scrawling calligraphy inside shimmering with an unearthly light.

Gangle has suggested that the words there are a riddle and is trying to make comparisons to classic novels. Ragatha has voiced that she thinks they are more literal directions akin to a scavenger hunt. They have been going back and forth for going on five minutes, Ragatha not really listening to what Gangle’s predicting, Gangle forcing herself to stick up for her ideas and re-explaining her reasoning slightly more insistently each time.

They’ve essentially repeated the same cycle of conversation eight times when Jax rolls his eyes and lets out an exhausted groan between his teeth. “This is ridiculous,” he snaps, turning and stalking away.

Everyone aside from Kinger, who is closely inspecting the tassel on a bookmark, stares after him, startled by his outburst. It’s the most genuine expression of frustration he’s let loose in as long as anyone can remember.

The next time is a few days later. They’re running a vet clinic caring for these pastel-colored fluffballs that don’t particularly look like any species in particular (a truck hauling a bunch of them crashes early in the morning, so they spend three hours triaging the little squeaky things that have a tendency to just roll off of the table if unsupervised for too long.) At one point Gangle, in a small exam room up to her ribbon ankles in chirping fuzzy things that wriggle violently when you try to get their vitals, has a full-on mental breakdown. Zooble talks her into taking a break, walking her out into the hall and sitting her down in the back room with a juice box, before wading into the exam room and taking care of it themself. The cuteness of the things has something of a maddening effect, the colors nearly migraine-inducing after a while.

It’s early afternoon and the chaos has died down. After losing interest in trying to terrorize the fluffy things when they didn’t really react to being chucked across a room or stowed in the refrigerator, Jax has resigned himself to actually completing menial tasks. He walks into the boarding room where Ragatha is pouring over a checklist of medications and conditions whose names are infuriatingly nonsensical, dragging a bag of feed from the main storage closet. He’s dumping the neon-colored kibble into a stainless steel bowl for a trio of happily meeping little animals when Ragatha turns around at the noise, squints at him, then says, “Jax, that’s the wrong food.”

He glances up, a grin on his face as he overfills the bowl, the little creatures wobbling happily over and vacuuming up whole pieces without chewing. “Whaddaya mean? No it’s not.”

“Yes it is,” Ragatha argues. “The orange bag is adult food. The purple bag is for the juveniles.”

Jax’s smile wanes slightly and he turns back to the giant feed bag he’s tipping over. The words on it are in the English alphabet but the syllables they spell out are unintelligible. “What?”

“You’re giving them adult food-”

“Fine,” he half-shouts, his voice partially drowned out by him flinging the massive bag of food, sending thousands of pieces flying into walls and cabinets and pouring out onto the floor, the bag landing with a heavy thud. Ragatha jumps. He rises to his full height and sneers at her before turning to leave the room. “See if I help you again.”

She stands there for a long time, stunned, the fuzzy things all frightened into silence. She eventually tells Gangle and Pomni about it later when they’re sitting around back at the circus. They’re as puzzled as her.

Nobody knows what to do about it. Zooble writes it off as him being a dick. Ragatha brings it up once or twice, but in a way that feels more like an attempt to make sure everybody knows that she’s distraught than to actually prompt a discussion on what’s actually happening. After a while it seems like everyone writes it off and moves on.

He gets up abruptly one night in the middle of dinner and walks off. Pomni looks down to see his food untouched.

She sits, her appetite evaporating, as everyone else chats about everything and nothing. Something is clearly wrong.

-

They’re led outside the next day, to a portal that they step out of into a field that looks like a semi-plausible extension of the grass covering much of the grounds. It’s an adventure that starts out with them herding sheep through flowers and tall grass that ripples in the breeze. As time passes, it becomes apparent that the shadowy figures milling around the occasional copse of trees are more than background animations when they suddenly begin to appear in the open fields behind everyone where they conspicuously weren’t before. It gradually morphs into an offbeat horror plot where they’re trying to protect their sheep and themselves from what turn out under their cloaks to be horrifying, monstrous husks wielding blood-stained sickles.

They stumble through the grass as the breeze turns into a chilly wind, trying to communicate over the rustling of the grass and the agitated bleating about where to usher the sheep and how to navigate obstacles while somebody tries to keep an eye on each of the horrifying monsters that only seem to advance on them when not watched. As the patches of trees grow more numerous it becomes harder to monitor all of the monsters. When they realize that any unwatched cluster of trees will produce another one, it has already happened four times.

They make their way through what has become more trees than field, frantically herding the now agitated sheep down the worn trail in the woods that leads to a patch of sunlight up ahead. They get close enough to see a pristine fence enclosing a small clearing with enough multicolored bursts of flowers in it to make it clear that this is the objective. They haven’t lost a single sheep for all their frustration, miscommunication, and near-hysteria, and Pomni hurries ahead to yank open the gate and help funnel their agitated, woolly bodies inside.

They hear a horrid, shrill sound, and six heads whip around to see a very small sheep at the back of the herd crumple to the ground. One of the grotesque humanoid things is over it, its spindly arm extended and its scythe covered in blackish red. The slain sheep poofs out of existence in a mercifully unfitting manner.

“We were so close,” Zooble utters, disbelief in their voice.

They stare at the thing, at its gauzy, disintegrating robe, its cloudy white eyes, the sickeningly dark liquid dripping sluggishly from the tip of its blade.

“We were so close,” Jax snarls, a fury in his voice that sends goosebumps rippling over Pomni’s skin, and the following sequence of events occurs so quickly they barely register. He closes the distance between himself and the monster in two long strides, rips the scythe from its hand, and slashes clean through its neck before it can react. Its head tumbles off and collides with the ground with a sickening, wet thump.

Jax tosses the blade off into the trees and stalks through the sheep and into the opening portal before the congratulatory jingle can play and the confetti can fall from out of thin air.

Everybody stands where they are, frozen, long after the confetti lands on the sheep and in the grass around them.

When they finally get back, the trek to the tent like a hike through purgatory after getting out of hell, chatter picks up sporadically, the shared need to put distance between the present and what they just experienced driving their forced, halting conversation.

“I gotta say,” Zooble mutters, “that combination of things was…”

“Jarring?” Ragatha guesses.

“Disturbing,” is Gangle’s contribution.

“The lightheartedness of those sheep and the horrifying corpse guys were a very effective juxtaposition,” Kinger says, putting a hand to his face in thought. “Kind of like an oddly specific nightmare you might have after eating old lasagna.”

In the beat of silence that follows, the ragdoll’s eyes flit to Pomni, who hasn’t spoken. She affixes a smile to her face. “You did great with those sheep, Pomni!”

It catches her off guard. “Oh! Uh-”

“She did just as well as the rest of us,” Jax chimes in, his voice making Ragatha gasp despite herself like she’d forgotten he wasn’t some feature of the adventure they’d left behind. “You’ll have to find another excuse to suck up to her.”

Ragatha glares at him with a vitriol Pomni has honestly never seen on her face before. Jax lopes over to the jester’s opposite side, resting a hand on his hip. “Except for grabbin’ the gate at the end,” he says, looking at her. “That was pretty helpful.”

Pomni hears Ragatha yelling at him but her focus is on observing his face as he grins nonchalantly at her. Nothing in his eyes or in the lilt to his voice betrays his angle. He’s clearly pleased by her tuning Ragatha out to scrutinize him.

He sits and harasses Zooble and Gangle at dinner that night, but when he gets up and strolls off, his food is nearly untouched.

-

It has been an exhausting week. They get back from an adventure where they were tasked with delivering a secret recipe to a master chef while being pursued by a team of mercenaries sent by a rival to intercept it and turn them into some sort of demented cannibal souffle and everybody makes their way to one of the sitting areas to decompress. Somebody mentions taking a walk out to the carnival rides and Pomni feels like she’s going to die if she takes a step in any direction other than toward her room. When she has assessed that yes, Kinger is serious about everybody taking a brisk walk after running for their lives to protect a stupid list of ingredients, she musters the energy to stand up from the oversized chair she collapsed into to try to sneak off before she can be dragged along.

As if on cue, Ragatha’s voice rings out. “Oh! Pomni!” She turns around to see the ragdoll trotting toward her.

Pomni smiles and feels horrible when her heart sinks. "Hi."

"I was wondering what you thought of Gangle's idea - adventures where we get to pick which character we play."

She’s not even asking Pomni to join them on their walk? The confusion throws her off. A wave of weariness washes over her and Pomni struggles to gather her energy into making her brain focus. "Yeah. It's ... an interesting idea. Kind of like a fighting game."

"Oh! Yeah!" Ragatha laughs a little. "I hadn't thought of that!"

"Yeah." Pomni rubs a gloved hand over her forearm. "Is she going to bring it to Caine?"

"I think she's trying to decide how to ask without hurting his feelings." The redhead shrugs a little. "Caine does get pretty insecure about people liking the suggestion box adventures – we were going to try to come up with good ways to present it to him while we walk out to the ferris wheel."

Ah. There it is. "Haha, yeah," is all Pomni can get out. She's so mentally exhausted she can't come up with a way to excuse herself.

"Geez, Rags, can't you see she's dying?" The glare is on Ragatha's face before she even looks in the direction of the voice. They both turn their heads as Jax approaches them. "Leave her alone."

"I'm not bullying her," the redhead retorts, indignant. It might be the way the artificial sunlight is hitting him from behind, but there's a glimmer to the rabbit’s eyes Pomni doesn't think she has ever seen before. His trademark smirk is ever so slightly too stiff, too forced. He tilts his head a little as he comes to a stop.

"What, do you think she'll get lost if she doesn't have somebody following her around? She's been here for weeks, y'know."

The redhead scoffs. "No! I obviously don't think that!"

It's the best opportunity Pomni's going to get. She sidles along the wall a few steps, bracing her hands against it. "I'm really sorry guys, but I actually am going to go chill in my room for a while."

"O-oh!" Ragatha rallies, turning fully toward her and clasping her hands together. "Of course, that's fine! I hope you have a good rest!"

Pomni nods and forces a small smile. Her eyes flick to Jax to see him watching Ragatha's flailing intently. 

She has been walking through hallways for a solid minute, retracing a route to the bedrooms that should be a longer distance but gets her there in half the time the standard route takes, when she sighs, stops, and glances over her shoulder. "Yes?"

He smiles at her innocently. "'Sup?"

"Let me guess," Pomni begins as he walks up. "You just happen to have something you need to do in this exact direction."

"I'm a busy guy," Jax says with a shrug. Pomni finds a disbelieving smile growing on her face. "I've got stuff to do in a lot of places."

"Uh huh." Pomni starts walking again. He matches her pace wordlessly.

"So. What was Raggy harassin' ya about?"

"She wasn't harassing me," Pomni murmurs, only injecting a little of the indignation into her tone that she intended. "She wanted to know my thoughts on the idea of adventures where we get to pick which character in the story we're each going to be."

He inclines his head a little, the ends of his ears hanging forward with the movement, a pantomime of thoughtfulness. "Ah. So she's thinking of anything she can come up with to try to get your attention."

"That is not what she was doing."

He rests his hands on his hips and lets out a short chuckle. "Oh, really? And how would you know what's going on in her head?" Pomni looks away, refusing to dignify this with a response. "If you cared you obviously would've said something when Gangle brought it up. The only time you say anything that could hurt somebody's feelings is when it gets brought up in a way where you can't avoid the question."

That's ... true. She doesn't react; doesn't give him the satisfaction of seeing how surprised she is at him picking up on that in a relatively short period of time.

"All I'm saying is that if she's gonna try to monopolize your time, the least she could do is come up with a topic that won't make you look like you wanna crawl out of your own skin and hide under a rock."

"Oh yeah?" She risks a glance at him again. "And what would that be?"

"What topic?" He sighs. "I don't know, only one of half a million things. Liiiike ... your favorite genre of music or whether you like coffee or tea better. Or which adventure so far you've hated the least, or whether you're a morning person or a night owl."

Pomni quirks an eyebrow at him, then thinks about it. "Eighties electronic music, coffee, any mundane adventure with lower stakes, and a night owl."

When she looks back up at him there's an odd sort of satisfaction on his features. "See? I already know way more about you than she does."

She snorts. "Because you asked me a couple speed dating questions?"

His expression becomes a little less exaggerated, amusement glimmering in his gaze. "It worked, didn't it?" He tucks his hands in his pockets. "I can talk to you about a hundred different things now." She hesitates there, waiting for him to elaborate. "I could ask you which 80s band you think is the most overrated. I could ask you whether you like New Order or Depeche Mode better." He meanders in front of her as he speaks. "I could ask you a bunch of questions about what flavors of coffee you prefer, and I would tell you when you inevitably had terrible taste."

Pomni has stopped walking. She watches as he kicks at a nonexistent crumb on the floor before stepping forward like he's meandering around with no particular destination. "I could ... ask you if you'd like an adventure where we just go to a festival, or if you'd like one where you just organize and sort a bunch of stuff." He turns and continues forward another step, circling around in front of her. "I could ask you what you'd do when you were up late. Did you read books? Did you watch TV? Did you put off your chores until an hour after you should've been asleep?" He turns his head toward her, and what was a smirk has become something inscrutable. "Do you lie awake in bed and wait for your brain to stop goin' a hundred miles an hour?"

Pomni swallows. She suddenly feels like something being inspected under a magnifying glass.

Finally, she stutters, "Were you looking for answers to all of those or...?"

Jax shrugs, not letting up where he's pinning her in place with his gaze. "S'up to you." Then, his voice dropping to the bottom of his register: "I'm most curious about the last one though."

"Well..." She fidgets with her hands, thinking. "A little of each, honestly."

"Oh yeah?"

"Yeah," she shoots back, turning to face him as he wanders. "All of those things. It's like when the rest of the world goes to sleep, there isn't all this ... static in the air. Like the interference from everybody else's signals goes away."

"That's..." He cocks his head. Pomni bites her lip, preparing herself for him to call her dumb or pretentious. "...a really good way to put it."

Her heart flutters in surprise. "Oh, you think so?"

"Of course.”

The jester chuckles humorlessly, scrubbing one hand over her arm a little self-consciously. Her eyes fall to her feet. “I thought you were going to say it was dumb,” she admits softly.

He takes another step, now back where he started at her side, his grin becoming something knowing. She glances back up at his glowing yellow eyes. “I told you I'd let you know if you said somethin' stupid, didn't I?"

A soft laugh comes out of her. "I don't doubt it." He keeps moving like he can't entirely keep still, stepping in front of her again, and when she starts walking toward their rooms again, he follows. She watches him for a bit before breaking the silence. "What do you do when you're up late at night?"

He blinks down at her. "Who says I'm a night owl?"

Pomni smiles crookedly. "Come on. I could smell it on you. Even before you said what I said was a good way to put it."

"Oh yeah," he murmurs, looking genuinely startled. She presses her lips together to keep her laugh in.

"So?"

His glowing eyes turn on her again. "What?"

She can't keep the smirk off of her face. "What do you do at night?"

"Oh. I dunno."

Pomni lets out a sigh, shaking her head. She doesn't know why she expected anything else.

Jax turns on his heel and walks ahead of her, backwards. There's an unusual amount of amusement in his gaze. "What do you think I do late at night?"

"Tch.” She dips her head, looking up at him from under her bangs. “What do you want me to say?"

He shrugs again and interlaces his fingers behind his head. "Whatever you're thinking."

"Jax." She gives him a look, unable to wipe the smile off her face. "Is there anything I could say I think a man of your age does late at night that isn't going to sound really bad?"

His eyes roll away, the picture of innocence. "I have no idea what you're talking about."

"Okay," she utters.

He turns to face forward again and they make their way down Pomni’s route in silence for a while. When he speaks again, he doesn't look at her. "So. That's really where your mind went?"

She chokes on her own spit. "You-you led me there!"

He closes his eyes in contentment. “Sure I did.”

Frustration fills her at the way her face is heating up, how her heartbeat has gotten shallower in her chest. “You did!”

She realizes later as she’s staring at her ceiling, unable to sleep, that she should’ve taken how pleased he looked as the warning it was. “How?”

“Everything! Your – your wording, your voice-”

“My voice?”

Pomni stares at him, her eyes as wide as moons as her head catches up to her mouth.

Oh.

Shit.

“Whatever,” she mutters, horrified, incensed at what feels like a trap he laid effortlessly for her to fall face-first into.

He lets out a breathy chuckle – so quiet it barely reaches her ears. It makes goosebumps break out all over her digital body.

“Welp.” He puts his hands on his hips, looking despicably amused. “I’ll leave you to it. “

Pomni’s head snaps up.

They’re standing before her door.

She looks back at him helplessly, and he gives her a small smile. “I’ve got mysterious, important stuff to do.”

Dumbfounded, she watches him stroll on.

“Later, Pomni.”

-

It’s all the more warning she gets.

Pomni is sitting in her room two days later, staring, unseeing, at the wall when her door flies open.

Jax comes to a stop like he’d been sprinting. His searching gaze finds her and her eyes go wide in shock at what she sees. He stumbles backward against the door, pushing it closed with his body.

His temples, his neck and his chest are damp with sweat. His pupils are pinpricks in his huge eyes. His chest is heaving with breaths so shallow he can’t possibly be getting any air and he’s shaking so hard he can barely hold himself upright. His face is scarlet and the flush is creeping down his neck. He looks desperate and terrified.

“P-Pomni, I…” He lifts a hand to curl loosely over his chest where his heart must be trying to break his ribs. His voice rattles out of him, brittle with emotion. “I’m in heat.”

Her stomach drops through the floor.

“I…” He slumps against the door and leans his head against it, fighting to draw in a full breath. “I n-need help.”

Icy adrenaline and molten arousal tear through her simultaneously.

She doesn’t know how she’s able to open her mouth when it feels glued shut with shock but she does. “Lock the door.”

A disbelieving, fraught look contorts his features. “A-are-” He lapses into panicked panting. It makes Pomni’s blood roar in her ears. “-are you sure?”

“Yes,” she hears herself breathe. She watches his unsteady hand fumble toward the doorknob, and when the lock clicks into place, the finality of it makes it feel like she’s falling.

He’s in front of her in three strides and his eyes are locked on her the entire time. He stands before her bed, raking in pained breaths. She can feel the heat coming off of him.

His hands hover in front of him as his eyes dart down her body and back up. “I-I don’t – I don’t know why this-”

“Come here,” she whispers, moving back to give him room. He makes a shuddery, pained noise and crawls onto the mattress.

“-don’t know why this is happening,” he grits out, shaking. “I c-can’t stop…” His eyes drop to her lips, to the small swell of her chest, her stomach. “…th-thinking about you…”

Scared out of her mind, Pomni reaches a hand out to touch his face. The reaction is instantaneous. His eyes flutter shut and he melts into her touch, his brows knitting together in relief.

“It’s okay,” Pomni mumbles, her tongue heavy with nerves. “I’m here.”

He opens his eyes again and his pupils nearly eclipse the yellow. Her heart slams against the bottom of her throat.

“Pom.” His voice sounds like him but it doesn’t. There’s an undercurrent of something beneath the tremor, something that makes the hair stand up on the back of her neck. Something not entirely human. “Can I – I really want to kiss you.”

For some reason this sends a pulse of arousal through her so strong it makes tears spring to her eyes. “Yes,” she breathes out. “Yes.”

The way he bends to find her mouth makes it seem like he’s fighting to keep his movements slow and predictable. He presses his lips to hers, shockingly restrained, shockingly hesitant. They’re wet from his desperate panting, and he inhales shakily, tilts his head, and kisses her deeper.

Pomni moans against his mouth, still holding his face, and when he leans heavily against her she lets him push her down onto the bed, her other hand coming up to find the back of his neck, trying to anchor herself and soothe him as her pulse thunders in her ears. He groans and a hard shiver runs through him, and he brushes his tongue over the seam of her lips. It looses a tiny, faint noise from her, and when she eagerly lets him in, he licks over the roof of her mouth and growls low in his chest.

Oh God, she thinks, head swimming with a dizzying mess of shock and elation and terror.

Her mind flits to the outbursts, the aggression, him getting more and more pushy when Ragatha would talk to her for too long or stand too close to her. Territorial.

He draws back to inhale and kisses her again, hovering over her, his mouth needy and possessive all at once. His saliva tastes good and his scent which she has only ever caught faint whiffs of before is thick and intoxicating. She is able to wonder fleetingly if some kind of pheromones he’s releasing are making her head foggy or if a primitive part of her brain has been craving him for so long that it’s attuned solely to getting as much of him as it can.

She wants to cry when he pulls back, her lips slick from how much he started drooling when his tongue touched her own. His ears droop toward her and the flush is crawling down his chest and dusting his shoulders. “Can I-” He brushes unsteady fingers over her sleeve. “-I wanna-”

“Yeah.” Pomni props herself up to fumble for the closure on the back of her outfit. When she shrugs it off of one shoulder he lets out a wanting sound and sits back to help her. She lays back to let him pull off her sleeves and when he gets it down to her waist he freezes. She feels her breaths coming harder as he stares at her chest with unadulterated hunger. His hands skim down her sides to tug at the fabric where it’s caught up on her hips and she wriggles out of it, kicking her shoes off and helping him tear her clothes the rest of the way off.

“Oh God,” he moans, and goosebumps spring up all down her body as her nipples harden painfully under his gaze. He’s on his knees between her legs, one of his overall straps slipping off of his shoulder. The bit of his narrow chest it reveals and the uninterrupted line of his collarbone feels obscene. “Pomni, please, can I-”

“Yes,” she feels herself saying, the sweltering heat inside her plummeting to settle between her legs. “Jax, yes.”

He moans again as he falls over her, his shaking hands settling on the slight swell of her hips. He presses his mouth, frantic and messy, down the column of her neck, stopping to breathe in at the sensitive spot where it connects with her shoulder like he’s reveling in her scent. His thumbs rub in slow circles, pressing into the softness of her skin, and Pomni bites her bottom lip hard as he smears frenzied kisses over her sternum, mouthing and pulling and scraping his teeth as he moves. He groans low as he moves to knead her breasts and laves his tongue over one of her pale nipples. Pomni cries out as her head sags against the mattress. She hears herself gasping as she stares at the canopy above her bed, writhing in his hands, arching upward when he takes her other nipple into his mouth and lets out a low, wanting hum as he sucks and licks at it.

The sound when he breaks the seal of his lips over her skin seems deafening, and she watches as he presses his forehead to the space between her breasts. It’s feverishly hot, and the warmth sinks into her as he lets out a short, rasping sound. “You taste so good,” he says into her skin, his shoulders heaving with his breaths. “I – I need – Pomni, I need to-”

“It’s okay.” He lifts his head to look up at her, and his eyes are big and dark and hungry in his pained face. So much heat is leeching into her body from him it’s dizzying. “You don’t have to wait.”

“Ngh.” He pushes himself up on unsteady arms, hanging his head as he slides his overalls off. The sight of his slim, unmarred torso does more to her than she would’ve expected. He gets off the bed, almost stumbling when he tries to stand, and the bulge straining against the fabric didn’t prepare her for what he has when he frees it. His cock is long and thick and slightly curved, the head dark and red with need. It looks painful. It weeps precum as she stares at it, and he looks back up at her like he’s ashamed, like he’s scared to force something like that on her when she’s so petite. She tries to imagine where it’ll sit inside her if he gets the whole way in and all she can do is let out a humiliating whine.

“Jax-”

“I’ll be gentle, I won’t hurt you,” he says in a rush, and a bead of sweat runs down his temple and over the side of his face. “I – I promise-”

“I know,” she murmurs, digging her hands into the sheets. “I know you won’t, just come here.”

He surges over her with a wild fervor, one hand feathering over her cheekbone as he settles himself between her thighs. He grasps one of them to hook it over his hip and edges closer until his knees are under the backs of her legs. She feels her own slick drooling out of her in the cool air of her room, feels the dampness where she’s been lying when he carefully moves her body.

“God, Pomni,” he breathes, his voice choked off almost like he’s trying not to cry. He’s staring between her legs like her arousal is a work of art. “That’s gorgeous.”

It’s too much. Too honest. She covers her mouth with one small hand and turns her head away as her insides twist with howling need. She tightens reflexively and she knows he sees it from the trembling of his next exhale. The way he has her hips tilted up makes her drip sluggishly downward toward the mattress in a way she can’t hide. She screws her eyes shut and muffles a miserable little noise with her hand. She feels the smooth head pressing against her as he holds onto her hip with one hand and drags it along the seam of her body, gathering the wetness between her swollen lips, gingerly rubbing it against her clit where it’s so sensitized it feels like a tiny electric shock running through her. She jerks in his hold when he does it, a surprised cry ripping out of her, and Jax moans like her being so turned on is adding even more to his need.

“Just – just breathe, Pomni, okay?”

She turns her head and looks back up at him, her vision blurry. A distant part of her is curious how he’s going to get the thick head inside of her. “Okay.”

He sucks in a breath between his teeth and pushes carefully, just against her opening, testing the give. He eases up then does it again, just familiarizing her body with the sensation, building a slow rhythm of gradually increasing pressure as she wills herself to relax and let him in more. Her hands fly to dig into the blankets and her breathing quickens as it begins to work, spreading her open the littlest bit, the unyielding pressure making something flutter with need deep inside her. He pushes the littlest bit harder and a throaty sound tears out of her when he spreads her open, how soaked she is letting him slip just past where her body turns from porcelain-white skin to velvety soft and pink and mind-numbingly warm.

“Oh God,” he grates out through bared teeth. A reedy sound bubbles up her throat in response. “Oh my God, Pomni.”

He gets further, maybe an inch. The stretch is so intense that she has to tell herself to relax, breathes in manually as deep as she can. With every tiny thrust he gets deeper, each one gaining more ground than the last, his desperation taking hold as the flush creeps further down his chest and sweat glimmers on his torso as he holds himself up. Jax lets out something between an agonized groan and a growl and he squeezes his eyes shut. He’s vibrating like a live wire everywhere his body touches hers.

“Are you-” He lapses into shallow gasps, still sliding deeper, and the sight of him above her is captivating. “-are you okay?”

“Yeah.” Her voice is small as she struggles to keep the dull panic at bay that keeps trying to break through at the unrelenting, building fullness. She wraps her legs around his narrow waist and braces for the feeling when she tightens them to beckon him further. It knocks a small sound from her and he hisses and goes rigid as she pulls him in. “A-aah – yes, I’m okay.” He looks at her with alarm and reverence. She draws in a breath and her words come out soft, rasping from low in her throat. “Keep going, I can take it. Please.”

It’s like her words snap one of the few strings of control that’s still holding him back. He rocks his hips until the thick head spreads her open in a slow, continuous movement, hitting something that pushes a high, pleading cry out of her. The feeling builds from there, that frightening, incredible, suffocating fullness that makes her blood roar so loud in her ears she barely hears the wanton moan that tears out of her as he slides home those last few inches, the obscene curve causing it to nestle against something that knocks the wind out of her and makes her eyes roll back in her head.

When the spots clear from her vision her insides are cramping viciously around him. She makes a faint, frightened sound before she can stop it, seeking out his eyes. He’s raking in breaths through teeth bared in something that looks like anguish, like the feeling of her clamping down on him so tight is causing him physical pain. His pupils are pinpricks in the massive, yellow moons of his eyes, and as she watches they slowly begin to grow.

“Jax,” she gasps, unlatching a shaking hand from where it’s wound in the bedsheets to brush her fingers over his chest. She can feel his heart hammering there. “Ah – are you – okay?”

The noise he lets out is utterly inhuman.

He lowers himself over her until he can rest his head on the mattress, his labored breaths fanning over her hair where his jaw brushes her temple. Pomni holds very still, her palm firm against his heartbeat.

“You feel … so good,” he growls. With a low groan he draws his hips back, sliding outward a few inches. Pomni’s other hand flies to cling to his shoulders. He rocks back in, bullying his way deep inside her until his hips press against firmly her body. He hits that aching, tender spot again, and thinks she might be crying.

“Oh God,” she croaks, her vision blurry as she holds on to him. “Oh God.”

“Am I hurting you?”

The air rushes into her lungs haltingly as she tries to keep breathing. “It’s a lot.” He moans at this, raw and hungry, and grinds against her like he can’t really control it. It punches a noise out of her that sounds like somebody else.

“’m I – nnh.” He readjusts, bracing himself with one arm and firmly gripping her thigh with the other. “-hurting you?”

“No, I-” She nudges her face against his neck, hiding there while her body struggles to adjust. “I’m okay, it’s just – you’re really-”

His fingers dig into her flesh as he draws back a little more and pushes back in and the words she's reaching for die in her throat. She hears what almost sounds like suction breaking from him filling her so completely before pulling partially out, the shamefully obvious way her body welcomes him back in with a filthy, slick sound. The drag is earth-shattering and her breath catches in her chest. He does it again, slow and separating further from her before reconnecting. It’s like he needs to anchor himself to her, like he needs to push to the end of the channel every time to reassert his place there. The smell of his skin and his sweat and his rasping breaths and the feel of him under her hands and between her legs surround her and flood her senses, and the next time he sinks back in until his body is flush with hers, she presses her mouth to his shoulder to muffle her voice as he knocks it out of her.

“Pom.” She whines into his skin, unable to stop herself from responding to him murmuring her name into her hair. She still has one hand pressed hard against his chest, the shifting of the scant muscle there doing something funny to her head. His voice is taut like dragging words out of himself is nearly impossible. His hips rock into her a little harder and she makes a louder, higher sound into his skin. “Pomni, you’re so warm, you – you smell so good.” He’s picking up speed, like not focusing all of his brainpower on being gentle is making him lose his grip. He’s still going relatively slow but being opened up on it over and over feels like struggling to find equilibrium only to have it perpetually ripped away. It feels like she’s melting around him, like she’s being dragged underwater. “Oh God,” he spits out again, sliding back into the molten heat of her body.

“Jax,” she rasps, fingers tightening as she hangs on as hard as she can. “Oh [$%&#!], Jax.”

He slows just enough to shift his weight, pressing a kiss to her forehead. It makes hot tears streak down her cheekbones. “Are you okay?” He brushes his lips to her temple, her cheek, clumsily over one of her closed eyes. “I’m – ah – ‘m trying to be gentle, oh-” She’d gasped and fluttered tight just as he was sinking past the ridge of her pelvis and deeper, and it makes him jolt above her. Exhaling shakily, he rests his forehead against the crown of her hair, his breath mingling with hers as his hips continue gradually speeding up.

“Yes,” she murmurs airily, wrapping both arms around his neck as he plunges deep and hits that spot again, the dull shocks of pain there gradually turning into something aching but sweeter, “Yes, it’s good, it’s really good-”

Jax responds to that with a noise like her words push him over the edge, something that in any other circumstance would sound like a gravelly cry of pain. He presses his forehead harder against her like he’s seeking comfort and the tempo of his hips increases until the filthy sound of him plunging into her is almost completely drowned out by Pomni’s gasping inhales and high, strangled whines. “Oh God,” he grates out again. He’s pulling almost completely out before driving back in, making her feel every inch of it as he sinks in over and over. The feeling is beyond overwhelming.

It washes over her slowly, delayed by her body trying to make sense of the devastating feeling of his cock splitting her open relentlessly, starting as a spark low in her stomach and radiating all through her until her thighs and her chest begin to lock up. Her body tries to pull tighter around him despite being so stretched open that it really can’t. She claws at his back as her moans pitch higher.

“Jax, Jax, [$%&#!], I’m close, I’m so close-”

“Yesss,” he groans, his hips snapping until he’s shaking her small frame, his grip on one soft thigh bruising to hold her in place. “Lemme feel it, Pomni, come around me, please.”

She’s barreling toward obeying him when he drops his head to the bed to free up his other arm, fumbling to reach between them. He grips her hip, presses his palm firmly to her body, and rubs his thumb over her clit.

The orgasm slams into her like a truck, making her clench so tight it closes off her airway. He whines and works into her frantically, pulling her back onto him to keep her from squeezing so tight she pushes him out. He hits every part of her inside, the feeling of heavy pressure against every sensitive spot exquisite and earth-shattering. An all-encompassing warmth spreads through the lower half of her body until the barrage of sensations are swept into one euphoric feeling, the sound of his hips slapping against hers growing audibly wetter. The high, mindless moans spill out of her then as her head sags against the bed and her grip weakens on his shoulders. She has never experienced anything like it.

“That’s it, that’s s-so good, you feel so good, it’s perfect,” he babbles, his hand falling away when her voice grows hoarse and she goes limp beneath him, finding the mattress under him to give him the leverage to thrust into her frantically. “I n-need – I have to, I need to cum inside you, Pomni-”

“Please,” she rasps, gazing off with glassy, unseeing eyes, “please do it.”

Jax lets out a feral sound, his fingers digging into her thigh until the pain trickles through the bliss fogging her head. The head of his cock impacts the end of the channel inside of her until her body is jerking involuntarily from it. He cries out, hiding his face in her fanned-out hair. He pulls her hips down on him, pulsing against her, spilling hot and thick as deep in as he can get. His body shakes violently as the spurts send shocks through him. She can feel it coating her insides, the intoxicating flood of warmth, impossibly filling her further.

“Jax.” It’s the only thing her lips can form. He gasps desperately for breath, and her eyes flicker over to see that his ears are hanging almost limply against the bed. There’s something painfully vulnerable about it, painfully endearing. She tries not to slur her words but it’s difficult. “So good. That was … so good.”

“I-I-” He concentrates on getting oxygen for a few long seconds. When he lifts his head enough to meet her eyes, his are wide. “Pomni, I-”

It hits her as she holds his stare that she can feel him – not just his seed coating her insides, not just the presence of him from not pulling out yet.

He’s still hard.

He’s throbbing, broad and rigid against her cervix, thick and unyielding where he’s stretching her swollen lips and causing sensation to buzz where he’s putting pressure beneath her clit.

“I’m.” He looks into her eyes with alarm, wild need, and something that flickers in his pupils, something that looks like it’s slowly overwhelming everything else. “I really – need to-”

He breaks off, loosening his iron grip on her thigh and carefully, slowly pulling himself out of her. The feeling of her insides coming back together causes her abdomen to cramp up again, and she fights to get herself up on unsteady elbows to watch as the flushed head slips out, letting a dizzying amount of cum pour out of her. It’s so hot it makes her breath catch in her throat. He gently pulls her upward by her upper arms, maneuvers her onto her hands and knees. More cum dribbles out of her from the shift and she moans at the feeling.

“God you’re hot, Pomni.”

This statement – the amazement in his voice at the desire she’s stirring in him – makes her sigh weakly. It sounds like him, like something he might’ve said to her someday in different circumstances. It makes butterflies explode in her stomach, even as he gropes her ass, enraptured by the sight of himself dripping sluggishly out of her.

“I’m sorry,” he says softly, one hand drifting to run up the line of her back, stroking her skin like he’s trying to comfort her. “I’m so sorry, I-”

He climbs over her, the warmth of him against her back settling something uneasy inside of her. He holds her hips with hands that are all but vibrating again, and when his weight shifts behind her, the reality of the situation hits her all over again. The shock permeates the fog in her head, sends adrenaline lancing through the hormones that are making her hazy.

Jax steadies her with one hand and the other moves to guide his achingly hard cock back to her swollen lips. The push of the head against her opening is made even easier by the cum that hasn’t dripped out of her, and it lets him slide in, the different angle making them both moan. This time he doesn’t stop until his hips are pressed against the plush of her ass, his dick buried so deep inside her it makes her stomach hurt. He hangs his head and lets out an astonished sound.

“Holy [$%&#!],” Pomni whines, her legs trembling.

He starts moving then, ripping a louder sound out of her, one not of pain but of being buried beneath sensation so overwhelming that nothing could possibly have prepared her for it. It feels like the sense is being rattled out of her head. She digs her hands into her rumpled bedsheets, quickly realizing that she’ll have to rely on his hands on her waist to keep her upright.

“That’s it,” he rasps almost mindlessly, his pace picking up staggeringly fast, “just like this, God, just like this, this is what I need-”

It’s so sexy it makes her tighten on him, the spike in pressure sucking the air from her lungs. He falls over her with a guttural moan, fucking into her deep and fast, and as his hips shake her body, he breathes her in, the heady mixture of her skin and her sweat and her arousal. “You smell so good, Pomni,” he tells her, his voice wavering with his thrusts. “I th-thought I was crazy, didn’t know why I noticed it, why-” He cuts himself off to focus on driving into her, the rhythm so rapid it knocks her forward on the bed. She gets one hand out further to keep herself up, and he grips her tighter, making up for it by pulling her back to meet his cock as he spears her with it. “Ngh – you smell different when you get flustered, when I get closer to you-”

Holy fuck.

He dampens her shock at that by running his tongue up the back of her neck, letting out a sound like it’s the barest fragment of a drug he’s been craving. Pomni whimpers at the feeling, and it compels him to swipe his tongue possessively over the side of her face.

“M’close again,” he murmurs, breath hot against her. A wanting moan spills from her lips at the prospect of him filling her even more. That waver is still beneath his words, but it’s lower, more resigned. “You feel so good, Pomni.”

The ache in his voice as he brushes his mouth against her ear breaks something in her. “Ah, please, please Jax, more-”

“I’ll give you more,” he growls, slamming her back on him, the impact against her cervix starting to make sparks appear behind her eyelids. “Don’t worry.”

She orgasms before he does.

It’s with detached amazement that Pomni watches tears splatter on her red and blue sheets between her hands. She thinks she’s sobbing between cries but she can’t really hear it. There are snippets that come through, she thinks she’s wailing his name, she hears the deep, indulgent sound he makes as he rams into her, making her wetness mixed with his spend spatter his stomach and her thighs. When the darkness begins to clear from her vision there’s a string of drool running from her parted lips to the bed, almost snapping every time his hips slap hers. She’s never had the pleasure burn so deep inside her. It radiates up her spine, tightens her thighs, constricts all the way up to her lungs.

His voice is ragged in her ear, desperate and hungry and rough as he digs his fingertips into her hips and swells inside her, jamming himself as deep as he can and spurting so hard she feels it sharply. He keeps coming as he grinds against her, and she actually feels the slow, specific ache of herself swelling where he’s pumping it into her. She lets out a soft, shocked sound at the sensation and a fresh tear streaks down her face. It feels like he’s coming more than the first time.

“Pomni,” he gasps, reverent, “Pomni, Pomni…”

Jax is almost still for a few breathless seconds, holding her tightly to him, a few droplets of his sweat pattering onto the curve of his back as the last dregs of his orgasm wring out of him. The sweltering heat where she’s so full of his cum makes a blurry warmth fill her chest and her limbs. She twitches around him, her face wet with tears and her heart slamming against her ribcage, and she gazes, unseeing, past the edge of her bed as she marvels at the feeling. He starts moving again and she wills her arms to keep holding out.

She’s not sure how long it goes on, how long he pummels her with mind-numbing pleasure. There are moments when words are tumbling from her lips, knocked out of her by the delirium and the relentless pounding, moments when she hears herself mumbling to him like she’s praying: “so good, so good, it’s so big, feels so so good, please yes, yes, yes-”

Her head is tilted back on her shoulders; she thinks he has a hand half on her jaw and half on her throat to help her hold it up to keep looking into his eyes. The look on his face is beautiful, screwed up in desire, disbelief, and an animal possessiveness. “I’ll give it to you, Pom, keep-keep looking at me like that, God you’re hot-”

At some point he starts hammering into her so hard it’s closing off her airway to try to keep her eyes on his so he removes the hand that was on her throat to let her hang her head between her shoulders, relocating it to wrap around her waist to help pull her onto him faster. All she can do is try to hang on as he shakes a string of disjointed pleas and half-moans, half-shouts from her, the longer strands of hair framing her face wet with tears and drool as his cum runs sluggishly down her thighs. He growls and drapes himself over her smaller body again, nudging against her head with his face like he’s trying to convey affection despite the utter ruin he’s imposing on her. “Gonna cum,” he warns her, voice raking up his windpipe. His hips get impossibly faster and Pomni screams as he digs his teeth into the junction of her neck and her shoulder. He doesn’t let go as he works himself through it, as he presses deep so her womb will take most of it as he releases, making a sound so low she feels it vibrating through him more than she hears it. She sobs as heat floods that space inside of her, that fragile, shivery ache growing as he fills it more, and as he feels her take it, he growls again, sinking his teeth deeper into her flesh.

She feels completely wrecked, completely subjugated, completely claimed.

His breath spills over her as he slowly removes his teeth. The release makes her gasp sharply, and he laps over the indentations like an apology. She can feel that they’re deep, her heartbeat throbbing in them, the muddy pain of dozens of capillaries broken beneath her fragile skin. Pomni understands that it’s a bite meant to keep her still as he works, a mating bite, and that it did exactly that, and it makes her brain break even more as it struggles and fails to handle what's happening to her. He slips entirely out of her again to watch the milky white that didn’t make it all the way in spill out, running in obscene trails down the seam of her reddened, aching lips, pattering to the sheets between her shaking legs. He places a hand on her ass and spreads her open with a thumb, his hungry gaze burning into her. Pomni whimpers and squeezes her eyes shut, biting her bottom lip as the chilly air drifts in to reach the swollen, silky parts of her. Another dribble leaks out and she makes a weak, humiliated sound just as he makes a deeply satisfied one.

“You look amazing like this,” he says softly, and she starts shaking harder when he keeps her spread open to look at her. “God, I knew you would.”

She’s starting to cry again, the sex hormones crashing over her in a tidal wave as her foggy brain tries to make sense of the admission that Jax has imagined her on her knees with his cum drooling out of her before. She stays obediently how he has her, far beyond being able to do anything else.

When he moves again, it’s to press his lips to the base of her spine. She squeezes her eyes shut as he trails hurried pecks up the length of her back, ending it a slow, searing kiss to the nasty bite mark that’s already starting to bruise. He hums softly as he does it, his steady hands finding their place on her hips. It’s the briefest reprieve, just enough for the anticipation of what’s coming to make to make her heart skip in her chest. She hears his breathing get shallower just before the tip of his thick cock slides between her lips again, hears it hitch when he rubs it along the seam of her body to brush slowly against her swollen clit. She’s still whining at the pressure against the bundle of nerves when he eases back in, just as hard as when he first pushed into her. The noise he lets out as he seats himself fully inside her again is chillingly gorgeous.

After that she loses all track of time. He hammers into her so hard and fast that it leaves no room for anything else, incapacitating her with sensation. She comes again not long after he starts up this brutal pace, spasming around him as she cries pitifully. He lets out a controlled breath like it takes a lot to keep his focus when she’s shaking and sobbing and winding so suffocatingly tight around him. He’s talking to her, she can feel it, but she only catches bits through the blood roaring in her ears and the way he’s overloading her senses. “-you’re doing so good, you’re being so, so good, oh God, Pomni, oh God, you’re so tight-”

The next time he comes, he clamps his teeth to the back of his neck, saliva dripping onto her skin as he lets out a raspy moan and pulls her hips flush against him to grind into her. The stretch where he’s gradually filling her up with more of his seed is bordering on uncomfortable but the blinding heat of it makes her wail and orgasm again, her body trying to draw him in, to coax more out of him. Her squeezing tight makes him whine, coming out of the fog just enough to rub unsteady circles into her skin with his thumbs, an attempt to soothe her and thank her. She gets a very short stretch of time to try to get in as much oxygen as possible before his hips start to rock again. It feels like the oversensitivity, the soreness of being fucked so mercilessly for so long, is actually making it easier for her body to get off. The next time she comes, something akin to a scream rips from her raw throat. There’s something different about it, a shallower, more concentrated burst of pleasure occurring in tandem with the deep shockwaves of him pounding into her, and she feels fresh wetness slipping down her thighs. Her arms and her legs have been shaking nonstop for a while and they finally give out under the assault. She collapses onto the soft sheets, into the mess there. Jax is still there, his hips pressed against her. The new angle makes her eyes roll back in her head.

“P-Pom-” His voice dissolves into a desperate, mindless groan. The pressure of the mattress pressing into her stomach makes her feel how big he is so much more acutely. He rests his head against the mattress, his lips brushing her forehead where her face is turned to the side and smashed into the blankets, his hips snapping into her feverishly. “-Pomni, are you – okay?”

“Yes,” she manages to get out, gazing blearily into his eyes, and it’s like he was able to hold on long enough to hear her reply before the tide drags him out again.

It feels endless. He squeezes his eyes shut and bares his teeth as he slams into her until he comes again, a shiver wracking her frame as the fullness deep inside of her grows, the excess spilling out around him and pooling between her thighs. “God,” he hisses, and she tries to reach her hand out to his where it’s curled into the blankets beside her to offer him some comfort, but her own only twitches where it’s limp beside her face. He barely stops thrusting this time before his pace picks up again. He fills her up again and again, the feral desperation making him gasp and tremble and choke her name out like it’s the only word he remembers. She can’t feel it as much where he’s ramming past her opening; can’t entirely feel the angry throb of her clit where he’s been putting nearly nonstop pressure on it from inside. She knows the sheets are soaked between her legs and under her hips and that she’s lying in a puddle of her own drool. The only thing that comes fully through is the thuddy, overwhelming feeling of the head of his cock hitting her bruised cervix. He has fucked her to the point of completely immobilizing her.

It’s so good she wishes she could die like this.

It occurs to her that he’s half-sobbing, his head against the sheets just above hers as he pistons his hips into her.

“I’m so sorry, Oh God.” His features are crumpled in agony, the light of her room swimming in his wet eyes. “I can’t stop. Oh my God. You’re so tight – so so soft – n’ so beautiful, Pomni-”

“S’okay,” she mumbles, her tongue heavy in her mouth. She tries to hold his wild gaze but it’s not easy. “Don’t stop.”

He’s working himself up, hitching sobs shaking his chest where it’s brushing against her shoulder. “I can’t, I can’t stop. I don’t know when I’ll be able to – nnnngh – to s-stop.”

“It’s okay. I’m okay.”

“Are you sure? God you’re so wet-”

“Yes,” she insists, letting the force of his thrusts push her voice out of her. “Keep going. I want it. I love it.”

It’s at this moment that she manages to get her hand to respond enough to slide it just over the edge of his. She weaves her fingertips between his knuckles and he shifts his hand to hold hers more tightly. Hard sobs are rattling through him and he begins to fuck her even harder, putting his whole body into it, driving deep and deliberate with every thrust until she realizes she’s moaning again, these breathy, obscene, high sounds that beg the deepest parts of his brain for more.

Pomni can somehow tell when he’s nearing the end of it, his breaths finally breaking into something more erratic and labored, his tempo finally decreasing from frenetic and inhuman to slightly less rhythmic. She has no idea how many times he came – more than a dozen, she’s sure. She’s an absolute mess between her legs, aching from the fullness deep inside her, the filthy squelch of him ramming into her through it filling her head.

“Pom – almost – almost there,” he gasps out, him shaping her name with his mouth tugging at her through the euphoria into which she’s drifted. She squeezes his hand weakly and he grips hers tight in return. “God, I’m almost there.”

“Okay,” she sighs, blanketed by the smell and the feel of him surrounding her. “Please, give it to me.”

“I am, I will, I will,” he swears, and he shifts his weight, pulling her until she’s kneeling, her face still smashed into the bed, her ass up for him to fuck into her easier. It’s even tighter this way and her eyes roll back as it pushes thick streams of his cum out of her. “Gonna give you every bit, I’ll fill you up, gonna make you mine.”

A shocked whine escapes her. She grips his hand harder. There’s a ferocity bleeding into him, making his thrusts vicious, his voice raspier.

“You like that?” He lets go of her hand to wrap his fingers around her wrist, pulling her arm back to give him more leverage. “Want me to breed you, Pomni? Pump you so full there’s no way it won’t take?”

“Oh God yes,” she hears herself moan.

“Really?” It sounds almost timid, a little breathy. He rams into her so hard it nearly knocks the wind out of her. “You’d let me do that?”

“Yes.” There’s no room left in her for humiliation or fear or sense; nothing to hold in a truth so foolish she shouldn’t even be thinking it. He groans as he pulls her body back onto him. “For you, yes.”

“Oh my God, Pomni.” He shortens his thrusts, hitting deep every time, just moving enough to get the slide of the molten velvet of her body along his length. Tears stream freely from her eyes as she tries to squeeze harder on him to make it feel good. From the high sound he lets it out, it must be working. “Gonna fill you up, I’m so close, you’re gonna be mine, mine, Pomni-”

The amount of cum that floods her insides as he slides deep and rolls his hips against her ass is obscene. Pomni yelps as the force of it stretches her womb more, spasming around his length in response, and the exhausted, satisfied groan he lets out makes the flutterings of a weak orgasm run through her, her body trying to hold in every bit. She has never felt anything like it. Fire seeps through her, heavy and dark, leaving her feeling utterly drunk on it.

He stills, hips tight to hers, silent apart from his deep, heaving breaths as he holds onto her, shivers rolling through his frame every few seconds like his body is haltingly coming down. She feels herself sinking, the lethargy blooming thick and heavy in her limbs, ferrying her from the haze of fevered pleasure toward deeply sated, bone-deep exhaustion.

After a few long moments Jax finally moves from where he’s kneeling, shakily releasing her arm and relocating the hand on her hip to the softness of her ass to gingerly pull her off of him. The feeling is indescribable, raw and deeply achy, but he drags against every sensitive spot inside her, making her moan softly, her voice so hoarse it barely comes out. The low sound that rumbles from his chest makes it seem like he’s equally sensitive. The minimal functions Pomni’s brain is still performing short out completely as his cum pours out of her, so much that the pressure in her belly is actually relieved a tiny bit. It spatters the bed, soaks the sheets around her knees, strikingly warm in the cool room.

“Mine,” Jax breathes, entranced by the sight. She whimpers, twitching around the emptiness.

When his hands wrap around her arms he’s incredibly gentle. He settles her on her back, out of most of the mess. She sighs wetly at being maneuvered so carefully, limp like a ragdoll where he puts her. She thinks vaguely that being full of him and covered in his scent is the most comforting thing she has ever felt. He crawls between her legs with an exhausted moan and collapses there, his fingers fitting into the small of her back, his thumbs stroking over her skin. His ears go completely limp as he closes his eyes and presses his face to her stomach almost in supplication, like he’s willing the place where she’s full of his cum to take, to hold his children. As wrung-out as she is, tears slip through her lashes again to race down her cheeks. It’s completely insane, beyond stupid, but she thinks she wouldn’t mind it so much.

She dozes for a while, the warmth pouring off of him keeping her from getting chilly in the oddly drafty air of her room. Even when she drifts beneath the surface, every bit of her mind is honed in on him, his deep, even breathing, his scent, the feel of his lanky body sprawled over her own. She dreams vaguely of things happening inside her she’s pretty sure can’t happen in the circus, things she never really thought about before getting trapped here.

When she awakens, she’s warmer. He crawled closer while she was out, his face tucked against her shoulder, one arm wrapped around her. She watches him for a long while. He looks peaceful in the exhaustion, pressed so close to her it’s like he’s being possessive even in sleep. He sighs, his breath warm across her neck, and it feels like somebody reached into her ribcage and twisted her heart as hard as they could.

A hundred questions try to assault her all at once. She’s too worn out to deal with them right now.

His breathing changes as she listens, the slow, deep breaths interrupted by one sweeping inhale that pushes his chest against her side and then quieting as his eyes flutter open. He’s still for a few seconds, assessing, then he exhales slowly like he’s assimilating everything that happened and where he is now. The arm holding her tightly against him loosens. His fingers brush her hip and trail thoughtfully up her side before making their way back down. She feels the goosebumps break out all over her, feels her nipples harden.

“Depeche Mode,” she rasps, her voice coming out clearer than she would’ve expected.

He lifts his head. “Huh?”

“I like Depeche Mode better than New Order. I love them both though.”

The fingers stroking her had paused. They begin their meandering trails again, up beneath her arm, down her ribcage over her waist. “Do you like The Cure?”

“Of course,” she says, turning her head to look at him. He props himself up on one arm, resting his face on his palm.

His eyes flicker between either of hers for a moment. He doesn’t stop trailing his hand along her side. “Do you like Tears for Fears?”

“Of course.” She looks up at him almost indignantly. He chuckles softly.

“Aren’t you a little young to be into all that stuff?”

“Aren’t you a little young to be into all that stuff?”

A grin spreads slowly across his face and he rolls his eyes. “Yeah, yeah, whatever.” She opens her mouth to say something more but her breath catches in her throat when his hand roams to her stomach, drawing mindless patterns there. Heat races southward, her blood relocating to the parts of her that are raw and messy. “Guess I should be into stupid 2000s pop, right?”

“I … I didn’t say that.” His eyes drop to her body before returning to her face.

“What were you saying exactly?” His fingertips trace a spiral over her abdomen, right where she’s aching the most, where the proof of him being there still sits.

“I…” His grin twitches into something more narrow, a little sly. He spares a glance to the ugly bruising on her neck, a perfect imprint of his teeth, before meeting her eyes again, a sweet attentiveness making his ears stand up straighter. “…I don’t know.”

“Oh yeah?”

When he leans closer she’s at a loss for words. He presses his palm over her womb as he closes the gap between their mouths.