Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

“I was more than just a body in your passenger seat,
And you were more than just somebody I was destined to meet,
I see you go half-blind when you’re looking at me,
But I am,
Between the secondhand smoke and the glass on the street,
You gave me nothing whatsoever but a reason to leave,
You say you want me, but you know I’m not what you need,
But I am . . .”

— “Granite” by Sleep Token

I

You married Zeke Yeager young, when you were barely through your sophomore year in college. Your family was, understandably, quite appalled when you announced the engagement, and rightly so, you knew. You were young, and your experience in the world was severely lacking (something you had wanted to rectify. Zeke knew this, of course, and assured you he would travel the world with you. With the foolishness and naivete of youth, you believed him). So, you didn’t listen to them. You loved Zeke — how could you not? He was handsome, and intelligent, and came from a family of means. You thought your parents would approve, and their disapproval hurt far more than you were ever willing to show your husband.

So, you married Zeke in a glittering ceremony in the most beautiful church you had ever laid your eyes on, under the eyes of God, and for a while, you were happy. You continued your university studies while Zeke did the same while interning for one of the most prominent politicians in Liberio. One day, you told yourself, Zeke would be a very important man, and when that day came, you couldn’t wait to stand beside him, proud, as his beloved wife.

You couldn’t put a finger on the exact day that fantasy came crashing down around your head. Really, when you thought about it, you thought it wasn’t one big, monumental event but more like how an empire falls: piece by piece, slowly, a day at a time. Like a frog dying in a pot of boiling water.

It started when his brother moved into your home. Before Eren, you had lived a life of blissful ignorance, complete with rose-tinted glasses, which he almost gleefully ripped from your face without your consent. Above all things, you realized, Eren hated people content to live in blissful ignorance. He took it almost as a direct insult. You did not know why.

Eren was Zeke’s younger half-brother, a product of their father, Grisha’s, second marriage. “To a barmaid!” Zeke smirked whenever someone brought up the topic, but only when Eren was safely out of earshot. Zeke’s own mother had died under mysterious circumstances, and from how he put it, his father had moved on with an almost insulting quickness. According to Eren, Grisha’s marriage to Zeke’s mother had been nothing more than a political and financial arrangement. His father’s marriage to his mother was a marriage of love. The only love, Eren told you, their father had ever felt in his life.

Despite the differences in their mothers’ relationship with their father, Zeke loved his younger brother. He doted on him and wanted the world for him. That didn’t negate the fact that they were two entirely different people.

Zeke was the older sibling: responsible, perfectionistic, bossy, and confident. He was an A+ student, the captain of the debate team and chess club, and had an eye on a political career. Eren, on the flip side, was anything but. He was rebellious and self-centered, with far more interest in the latest protests happening on campus than in the latest political pundits spouting their rhetoric at the podium. Where Zeke kept his nose buried in a book or dedicated his time to editing the latest essay on his computer, Eren kept his fist in the air. He was passionate and extroverted, charismatic and carefree. Everything that Zeke wasn’t.

They also looked completely different and, according to Zeke, held remarkably little resemblance to their father. No, both Yaegers inherited a majority of their appearances from their mothers, and my, they were like light and day to each other.

Zeke was tall and lithe. He had a swimmer’s physique, one he fought hard for every morning doing laps in the campus pool. If he didn’t stay on top of his workout regimen, you knew, he could grow a little paunchy, something he detested. His hair was short and blonde, his eyes blue, his skin pale and freckled. He wore glasses, though his eyesight wasn’t that bad, you thought — not enough to need glasses, anyway, even when reading. Over the past year, he had grown a beard, the same color as his hair.

The only thing Eren shared with his older brother was his height. It was also, apparently, the only thing they had inherited from their father. Other than that, his hair was long and dark, a beautiful deep brown that resembled the color of roasted chestnuts. His eyes were a beautiful green, the most beautiful eyes you thought you had ever seen before. His body was better than his brother’s, you almost reluctantly admitted, though you tried hard not to look at him whenever he returned to the house in the morning from his daily jog. He was active. He hiked, he did parkour, and he played sports. You got the impression that this was a source of irritation for Zeke. Where Zeke had to fight to maintain a good physique, Eren’s came almost effortlessly. This was another reason you made a point of never gawking at Eren the scant times he walked around without a shirt on. You didn’t want to make your husband feel bad.

Eren moved in because, according to him, he needed a change of scenery and, besides; he needed a place to stay when he started classes at the university in the fall. Zeke told you it wasn’t that simple. Eren and Grisha had argued, he said, and it had been bad, bad enough that their father had kicked Eren out of the house. This surprised you. Usually, Eren and Grisha got along very well. It was Zeke their father often came to verbal blows with. You wondered what it could have been about, and how bad it could have been, for their father to cast Eren down from his long-held position as the Favored Prodigal Son.

So, he moved in with you and Zeke, and you offered little protest to the arrangement. You had the space, and you knew very well how difficult it could be to attend college while working for rent. Maybe you had been too soft, too caring, and too understanding, or maybe you had wanted to please and win over the little brother your husband loved and adored so much. Either way, you wanted to make things easier for Eren. You knew what it was like to struggle.

After Eren moved in, Zeke’s schedule became demanding. His classes grew more challenging; the politician he interned with, more unforgiving of mistakes. He disappeared from the house for long periods of time, researching at the library, attending meetings with his professors, or busy with the thick files his boss gave him to review for the day. Often, he fell asleep at his desk, drooling onto an open draft of a bill, and while you always felt sorry for him and told yourself he was doing this for you, you couldn’t help but feel . . . neglected.

With the sudden upheaval in his schedule, your sex life suffered, too. It had always been decent, though not as thrilling as some of your girlfriends recounted theirs being, or how some of your romance novels depicted, but it had always satisfied you.

You thought.

You didn’t orgasm with Zeke as often as you liked, but you always rationalized this by reminding yourself that he was tired and couldn’t focus on your pleasure as much as he could at other times. You convinced yourself that you understood, and you supported him. You were his wife, after all. What else could you do? You had, after all, vowed to love and support him through sickness and health, and through bad times and the good.

All this was before you learned about Magdalena.

Magdalena Schmidt, Zeke’s fellow intern and his lover. Pretty, blonde, and icy cold in the scant instances the two of you met. Understandably so, you thought.

A mistress explained your lack of a sex life better, you thought, when you found her lipstick stain on the collar of his shirt and her body glitter on his chest, than exhaustion on his part. If he had the time and energy to fuck another woman, you thought, as furious tears beaded in your eyes, then why couldn’t he fuck you? What did she have that you didn’t? You would have given your left arm to know the answer to that question.

His betrayal hurt far worse than the lack of your family’s approval of your relationship had. You had been unquestioningly loyal to him — the picture of a perfect, doting wife. You were exhausted and furious from juggling your classes along with everything else: the cleaning, cooking, scheduling his appointments, dropping off the dry cleaning, and paying the bills on time — why did he get to have the affair? Why did he get to have his cake and eat it, too?

Eren noticed your change in mood when he arrived home from class one afternoon and walked into the kitchen to grab a drink. You had been cooking dinner while trying to erect a façade that you were failing spectacularly at. He eyed you like a bomb liable to explode at any second.

“What’s wrong?” He asked, and you drew in a sharp inhale as your wooden spoon came down hard onto the countertop with a bang beneath your palm. You stood there and bowed your head, eyes closed, as you tried to center yourself. To his credit, he hadn’t flinched or shied away from your outburst. If anything, he seemed almost enthralled with you. He drifted over to the countertop, and his voice was low and even as he asked again what was wrong. You thought you had detected concern in his voice, but dismissed it, for it had vanished so quickly, you wondered if it had even been there at all. Perhaps you were imagining things.

“I found out Zeke’s been fucking another woman,” you said with a shrill laugh, and Eren recoiled in surprise. You rarely cursed, but the moment seemed appropriate. He didn’t speak as you added, “With one of his fellow interns. Can you believe that?” Again, Eren didn’t answer, and you took that silence with a bewildered glare. “Really, Eren?”

“Look, this sucks. I know it does,” he said as he moved to the fridge and withdrew two bottles of beer from it. He opened a drawer, retrieved a bottle opener, and then used it to open them. He arched an inquiring brow. “You wanna know why Zeke’s mom died?”

He handed you one of the beers from across the countertop that separated you, and you took it from him. He continued before you could tell him no, at the moment, you didn’t want to know how Zeke’s fucking mother died. You couldn’t give less of a shit.

“Rumor has it in the family that she killed herself because dad had an affair. With my mom. That’s why they married so quickly after her death.”

He adopted a terse smile upon seeing the shocked look on your face and saluted you with the brown stem of his beer bottle before he lifted it to his lips. “I’m sorry, babe,” he apologized, his eyes practically bleeding sympathy despite the caustic tone of his voice. “But you married into the wrong family. It runs in our genes, apparently. Infidelity.”

“What about you, then?” You snapped, shielding yourself with the beer bottle as if you could cower behind it. “Have you ever cheated on a girlfriend?”

“Oh, no!” he chuckled as he shook his head. Dropping to his side, the beer bottle dangled from his limp fingers by the stem. His head canted to the side and fell to rest against the fridge. His green eyes bore into yours, and you couldn’t look away, even as they made your heart race. He had soulful eyes; green pools designed to draw you in and keep you. “I’m much, much worse. I covet.”

“Careful, Eren,” you replied snidely as you finally took a draw from your beer. “Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor’s wife. Remember?”

Eren chuckled darkly as he planted his shoulders against the fridge and pushed off it, back bowing, hips thrust out. He moved sinuously when he wanted to, like an indolent great cat or a serpent lazy from sunbathing. He had a dancer’s body, and you vaguely remembered Zeke telling you he had been a cavalier for years before he quit ballet and opted to go to university, instead, and you could see it with every graceful movement. You loved watching him when he moved like that, the way his muscles rippled beneath his tight shirts, flexing in ways that had your thoughts twisting around themselves.

He didn’t look at you as he turned and headed off into the house. The words he called over his shoulder as he left, though, filled you with an indescribable emotion.

“Try, ‘Thou shalt not covet thy brother’s wife’.”

II

You stood in the driveway with your husband, hoping to talk to him before he left for his first class of the day. From behind Zeke’s back, beyond the rising metal frame of his car, you watched as Eren approached the house, at a run at first, before he slowed to a walk. Back from his morning jog, he was shirtless, his chest heaving, his body soaked with sweat. With his dark hair pulled back in a hasty bun behind his head, the sight of him captivated you until his eyes crossed with yours.

With an arched brow and the ghost of a smile playing across his lips, you looked away from him and back at your husband. Your smile tightened.

“As I was saying,” you said, trying to ignore the affectionate smile on Zeke’s face and wanting more than anything to slap it off him. He was fucking another woman. He didn’t get to be affectionate toward you. “Can you look at the bathroom door when you get home? It keeps getting stuck, and I don’t know how to fix it.”

You tried to move past the Revelation of Magdalena. As you considered how to broach the subject with him, you attempted to dismiss it from your thoughts. You couldn’t. Whenever you looked at him, it choked you like a hand around the throat, clogging your esophagus, making it almost impossible for you to breathe. He had tried to instigate sex the previous night, and while you usually would have gladly reciprocated, you turned him down with the excuse that you were on your period. You didn’t want to have sex with him anymore. The thought of it disgusted you. Why, you asked yourself, would you possibly want to have sex with a man who was cutting out on you with another woman?

You thought about your all-consuming fantasies about Eren. Your . . . increasingly lewder fantasies.

Zeke chuckled and reached out to lay his hand atop yours, where it curled over the top of his open car door. “I’m not a carpenter, sweetheart,” he said, and his answer almost made your eyelid twitch. “Call someone about it, okay? It’ll be easier that way, trust me. Knowing me, I’d only make it worse!”

He leaned forward and dropped a sweet kiss onto your cheek before he ducked into his car. You released the door and turned to head back toward the house as he started the vehicle. You watched him head down the driveway, waving, and only stopped when his car disappeared down the shadowed, tree-lined drive. To your surprise, when you turned back to the house, Eren waited for you on the front stoop, his expression blank as he watched the scene between you and his brother play out.

Your step faltered when you saw him, nervous. Ever since he told you he coveted you (how else were you to take his “Thou shalt not covet thy brother’s wife” comment?), you found it difficult to be around him. Where before, you saw him as your brother-in-law and a potential friend, now you . . . didn’t. You couldn’t help but notice the way his clothes hung on him now. How they drew tight across his shoulders when he moved, and how his sweats hung low on his hips, offering a tantalizing glimpse at the stretch of skin just below his navel. His smell was delectable to you, even now, sweat-covered from his morning run, mixed with the white tea and sage of his cologne, and you itched to lick the sweat from his skin.

It confused you that you felt this way about him. You weren’t Zeke, and you weren’t Eren. You didn’t cheat, and you certainly didn’t covet.

Feeling defensive, you crossed your arms and stopped beside him. He remained where he was, head tilted so it rested against the brick wall by the front door. You didn’t look at him. You couldn’t look at him.

“Marital troubles?” He asked and then smiled at the sharp glare you threw at him.

“Fuck you, Eren,” you hissed as you opened the door. You wanted to slip inside and slam it behind you in his face. Instead, he reached out, planted his hand on it, and closed it. His gaze bored into yours, and you felt your heart race.

“You want me to look at it?”

“What?” You asked. “The bathroom door?”

Eren nodded. “Yeah. Mom was a barmaid, remember? I didn’t grow up with a silver spoon in my mouth, not until Zeke’s mom died and dad married mine. I’ve had to work real jobs in my life.”

You almost nodded and said yes, but then you noticed the way his gaze darted down to your mouth. He wants to kiss you, a gleeful voice whispered inside you. Badly.

You thought about it then, the two of you together. Of you pulling him into the house and Eren kicking the door shut behind him as you pulled him down to kiss him before eventually bringing him down to the floor with you. Your teeth gnashed as you ripped your clothes from your bodies, desperate for skin-to-skin contact. It wouldn’t be kind; it wouldn’t be gentle. You got the sense Eren didn’t do gentle sex. No, it’d be rough, and claiming, and you’d walk away from it with bruises on your body and your cunt sore from the way he pounded into you but supremely satisfied all the same.

You shifted your weight from one foot to the other. A shiver wracked your frame. His gaze felt heavy on you, pervasive and searching. A decadent, gut-wrenching emotion consumed you, and only after a moment’s anger toward Zeke had passed did you recognize it as arousal.

“Seriously,” he said. “You want me to take a look at it?”

Your face inflamed with heat as you shook your head. You turned, grasped the knob of the door and opened it. “No, it’ll be fine,” you whispered as you slipped inside the house. Your body brushed his as you passed, against those hard muscles, and you shuddered and almost stopped. Judging by the way he stiffened, he thought you would. His fingers brushed your arm, as if he would have grabbed you had you stopped, and you wondered what he would have done if he had. Pulled you to him? Kiss you? Push you inside and kick the door closed behind him? 

You would never find out.

Chapter Text

“What would happen if we kissed,
Would your tongue slip past my lips,
Would you run away, would you stay,
Or would I melt into you,
Mouth to mouth, lust to lust,
Spontaneously combust . . .”

— “What Would Happen?” by Meredith Brooks

I

Laughter drifted in from the living room, accompanied by the sounds of cheerful chatter and deeper conversations. You stood at the sink in the kitchen washing the dishes from dinner while trying to ignore all the noise.

They were all Eren’s friends. While you liked Armin and Mikasa in particular, and considered the others delightful, you wouldn’t exactly call them “friends”. You had your own friends — Levi, and Hange, and Miche, and Erwin. These, these were Eren’s friends, not yours. Though you found it flattering how they tried their best to include you every time they came over to hang out.

He had forged for himself a wonderful group of friends, you thought. Armin was sweet and courteous, always tidying up after himself and asking if you needed any help before and after dinner. Mikasa seemed wonderfully grounding if not a little quieter and more severe than you expected. You could see how deep their friendship had become over the years, rooted in their shared childhoods, and it made you feel warm to see it. Here you were, having thought Eren had been lonely for much of his childhood. It made you feel good knowing it had been the opposite.

You smiled and chuckled as you overheard a joke, undoubtedly recited by Connie, the jokester of the group, from where you stood in the kitchen. Laughter erupted as you heard Sasha request more popcorn, and you resolved to bring her more unless Eren retrieved it.

You didn’t want to go in there, though. There was a new girl in their group that night, a short, petite, stunning blonde named Historia. She was sweet, but when you saw her, you had to do a double-take. Your jaw hardened, and your smile turned tight as you looked at Eren with a silent, furious glare that screamed, “What the fuck are you doing?”

Eren didn’t reply. If anything, he ignored your look with an all-knowing smirk that told you he knew exactly what he was doing. You seethed inside while thankful Zeke wasn’t home that night (no doubt in the arms of Magdalena) because Historia was the daughter of the President. The very same president, who happened to be a political rival of Zeke’s boss.

You knew what Eren was doing. The knowledge curled in your stomach in a weird amalgamation of excitement and dread.

Historia was sweet, and a little dumb, you thought, but harmless. She seemed indifferent to her father and his policies, which seemed absurd to you, a woman who had built her entire life around her husband’s future budding political career. Your anger toward Zeke still broiled inside you, so fierce sometimes that you had to gasp for breath. You hated the sight of your husband; you stomached his kisses and his hugs while forcing yourself to sleep beside him at night. Sex had become virtually nonexistent. You thought you’d rather cut off your own arm with a rusty butter knife than allow your husband inside you.

And at the center of it all stood Eren.

You remained unsure of how to handle your growing attraction to him. Even though your husband committed adultery first, you told yourself you weren’t a cheater, not like him. You didn’t want to be like him. You wanted to rise above it all — your anger, your hurt, your betrayal — as a woman should, you thought. You had, after all, made vows at the altar and intended to honor them. Even if he didn’t.

But when you looked at Eren . . . when you found yourself drowning in his beautiful green eyes and fantasizing about what it would be like to be with him as you readied dinner or did homework or planned Zeke’s appointments for that week, you felt yourself falter. You felt unsure. Because what you wanted ran counter to what you knew you should do, and it both infuriated and intimidated you.

That was why you avoided joining him and his friends that evening. You didn’t enjoy bearing witness to the way Historia clung to Eren. Even now, in the living room, you knew she was curled up beside him on the couch, snuggled against his side. The very thought steamed you with jealousy even as you felt bewildered by why you would feel that way. Eren wasn’t yours. You had no claim on him. He was your husband’s younger brother. You didn’t have the right to feel that way about him.

Mired in your thoughts, you kept the faucet running while reaching over to press the button for the garbage disposal. Instead of hearing the grinding that signaled the food bits being ground up, all you heard was a whir. You frowned.

“What the hell?” You muttered as you tried it a few more times to the same effect. Your irritation rose. Was everything in the house choosing to fall apart at the same damn time?

You jumped, startled, and whirled around when the side door opened and shut. Zeke looked surprised to see you too, or perhaps it surprised him to see you so startled to see him. You laughed and pressed your hand to your chest.

“Zeke! You startled me.”

He grinned. “Sorry, love,” he said as he placed his briefcase on the island counter and crossed to you. He bent, brushed his lips across yours in greeting, and as he moved away, you caught a whiff of perfume that he did not wear. Nor the perfume you wore.   

Your anger flared back to life as you realized you had been right: he had been with her. Magdalena. The other woman. The mistress. You pressed a hand to his chest and stepped away, afraid even to be close to him lest you strangle him. You got the image of wringing his neck like a chicken’s, and it made you feel a little better.

Your sudden move away from him made him frown. “What is it?” He asked as he reached out to grasp your hip. “What’s wrong, love?”

You shook your head as you wiped your damp hands off on your apron. You swept aside a lock of your hair before you gestured to the sink. “It’s nothing, just . . . the garbage disposal isn’t working. Do you think you can look at it sometime tomorrow?” You asked, trying to appear hopeful. In the beginning of your marriage, when you first bought the house, pre-Magdalena, when you still loved each other, Zeke would do things for you around the house. He’d mow the lawn, fix the sink whenever it flubbed up, change the car’s oil — everything you grew up thinking a man was supposed to handle for his wife. You still remembered the anger and frustration that came with putting the dining room table together, only to make wild, celebratory love on top of it when you finished.

Now, he did none of those things. You hired out help now. He’d wave his hand and tell you he was too busy. With school, with his boss, with his fucking mistress.

“Sorry, love,” he apologized with an indulgent smile as he edged past you to go either to his office or upstairs to the bathroom to get ready for bed. “But I’m not a plumber.” His voice changed then, becoming bright and cheerful. “Evening, Eren! Sorry, but I’m too tired to stay and talk. See you in the morning, though?”

You didn’t notice Eren standing there by the island counter, his hand balled into a fist on the marble. He replied to his brother with a nod, while Zeke’s response floored you into speechlessness. Anger pulsed through you, so much so that it blurred your vision for a moment. You stood there, feeling breathless, and only returned to yourself when you felt Eren’s hand on your elbow.

“Hey,” he whispered. “Breathe. Can you do that for me? Breathe.”

You forced yourself to take a shuddering breath, felt a little better, did it again, and then frowned. You did not step away from him like you did Zeke, though, and knew he noticed. His eyes darkened at the sight. He stood so close, you could smell him. An unbearably masculine scent that made you want to lean in and huff it. He smelled heavenly to you.

“What are you doing in here?”

“Sasha wanted more popcorn. I told her I’d get it,” Eren replied, and you nodded as you turned, arm already outstretched toward the required kitchen cabinet.

“Let me --”

When Eren’s hand trailed down your arm to take your hand, you stopped, and your voice halted. You turned to look at him, eyes wide and questioning, and he nodded toward the sink. “You want me to look at the sink in the morning? Mom was a barmaid, remember? Grew up in bars around plenty of clogged drains and fucked up garbage disposals. I can fix it for you.”

“I asked Zeke to do it,” you whispered, and he nodded. He stepped closer, halving the distance between you, and the smell of him threatened to overtake you again. You fought to keep from swooning.

“I know. I heard him.” He replied, nodding. “If he won’t do it, let me. I’ll be more than happy to take care of you in his absence.”

Your face burned at the double entendre. You wrenched your hand free of his and stepped back again. Anything, you knew, to put distance between you. You needed to breathe fresh air — to clear the smell of him from your head.

You grinned at him over your shoulder as you fetched a glass bowl from a nearby cabinet to put the popcorn in. “Because you covet, right?”

He chuckled as he crossed his arms and leaned his hip against the counter. “Yeah. Because I covet. Because I long. Because I yearn and I crave.” He rolled his eyes. “That’s the issue with Zeke, man — he stopped coveting you. He stopped yearning for you.” He pushed himself off the cabinet and took another step toward you, and his voice dropped. His green eyes were dark, like chips of emeralds. “And you are so easy to covet! You have no idea how much I yearn for you. How much I crave you!”

Your heart and pulse raced as you gripped the glass edge of the popcorn bowl so hard you feared it would break. You looked away, unable to breathe, but not from anger. Arousal pooled low in your core again (you were getting better at recognizing it now) and you felt the urge to reach out and grab him. To pull him close and kiss him. Speaking of coveting, of longing, of yearning and craving — you longed to kiss Eren! You coveted his gaze on you — you yearned to know what it would feel like to have him inside you and craved the knowledge of what it would be like for him to fill you up —

But you caught yourself before you could do something foolish.

You were not Zeke, you reminded yourself. Even as Eren’s hooded, desirous gaze made you doubt yourself and your most deeply held convictions. The sight of it, and the feel of it on your skin, hot, like one of the most intimate caresses between two lovers, shook your resolve to its very foundations. Thankfully — miraculously — they held.

“Go back to your friends, Eren,” you whispered as you swallowed the lump that had formed in your throat. “You’ve been gone for a while now. Your girlfriend’s probably missing you.”

He shook his head and didn’t even so much as glance over his shoulder toward the living room where they were. “Historia isn’t my girlfriend.”

You laughed, a bark that bounced off the walls. He arched a brow but didn’t flinch at the sudden loud sound. “Oh, really? Then who is she?”

“No one,” he replied, shrugging. “She means nothing to me. Just my feeble attempt to get my mind off you.”

“Oh?” you asked with an arched brow and a sardonic grin. “And how’s that going for you?”

Eren scoffed. “Zeke would stand a better chance of gaining our father’s approval than I would trying not to think of you.”

You laughed again, shocked by his words, and quietly delighted to hear someone else talk badly of your husband, though guilt soon followed. Whatever your issues with Zeke, Eren was his brother. You should support their relationship, not feel tempted to destroy it like Magdalena had destroyed your marriage with so little forethought and empathy.

You looked away and shook your head as you untied your apron strings and pulled it over your head. You then placed it on the counter beside the bowl. “Go back to your friends and your one-night stand, Eren,” you said, suddenly feeling weary and done. “I’m going to bed.”

As you moved to leave the kitchen, he reached out, and his hand wrapped around your arm, stopping you mid-step and pulling you close. You looked down at where he had you caught before your gaze moved up to lock with his. You startled and recoiled at finding him so close — so close that his lips were millimeters from yours. His mouth ghosted yours, a tempting, tantalizing promise, and you opened your mouth to speak, to chide him, to tell him to please, please, release you, but he spoke first before you could. His breath fanned out across your parted lips, and you were so tempted to kiss him then, to steal the breath from his lungs and refill them with your own.

“You feel it too, don’t you?” He whispered — breathed, really — and you swallowed. He lifted a hand to cup your cheek. His thumb trailed along your bottom lip and parted it slightly. Your heart slammed in your chest. Your blood rushed hot through your ears. “You covet too, don’t you, you sinful little thing?”

Good. Fucking. God.

You felt your brain almost shorten out as thoughts — all of them lurid and tempting and debauched — slammed through you like he had slammed his foot down on the gas pedal of your relationship and threw the both of you Mach-5 into six-lane oncoming traffic. A veritable porno of images of the two of you together burned through your mind, and a hot path of blush spread across your cheeks and nose.

You gasped when you felt another pair of eyes boring into you, into him, into the place where he had grabbed you to pull you close, so close his scent flooded your nose again and filled your head with lurid thoughts that dripped into a puddle in your panties. The touch seared into your cheek, tempting you to draw his thumb into your mouth and make him imagine other parts of his body you could suck on.

Your eyes flicked toward the archway that separated the living room from the kitchen and found Historia watching the two of you. She stood by the wall, hand resting on the threshold, eyes narrowed as she gazed at his hand around your arm. When her gaze moved up your body from where he gripped you and held you tight to where his hand cupped your cheek with his thumb on your lip, she gasped, and her eyes widened. You could read every little suspicion she now knew as truth in her pretty little head written on her face, and you wrenched yourself from the grip of your husband’s brother and took an enormous step away from him.

Your thoughts whirled. You swallowed hard and avoided looking at him as you thought about how much distance to put between you. No length of space seemed adequate. It all seemed too far and too close all at the same time. You craved him like a drug, like a hit of cocaine straight to the brain from the nose, and the thought galled you. You weren’t usually so . . . gluttonous.

Sinful, as he put it.

“Goodnight, Eren,” you whispered, horrified, as you cradled the hand he had held to your chest as if he had wounded it. “I’ll see you in the morning.”

He opened his mouth to speak, but Historia whispered his name, and his words died on his tongue. He glanced over his shoulder at her, eyes wide and stricken, like she had caught the two of you in the act — caught you two fucking on the kitchen counter — before he turned back to look at you. His expression softened, and he nodded, momentarily chastised.

“Goodnight, little sinner,” he whispered, so only you could hear. Historia came up from behind him. Her arms looped around his, holding him tight, her gaze tight and accusing you even as he gazed at you like you were the sweetest thing he could possibly ever imagine. “Sweet dreams.”

II

You should have known better than to try and get any amount of sleep that night. Sleep, stoutly defiant, refused to come, as if it knew the treasonous thoughts and desires you harbored in your heart.

You lay awake into the wee hours of the morning, mere feet away from Zeke’s slumbering, unknowing form. He snored beside you, on his side, back facing you while you lay on your back and gazed up at the lazily spinning ceiling fan above you. Slowly, you succumbed to your whirling thoughts.  

Was Historia still in the house, you wondered? Had she joined Eren in his room after the rest of his friends left for the night, or had he followed her home to hers? Were they together?

Were they fucking?

The thought needled at you. It burned through you. Jealousy, irritation, frustration, anger — you felt them all, potent as a poison coursing through your system, threatening ruination. If you had known it’d come to this with Eren, you never would have allowed him to move in. Nothing was worth this torment and uncertainty, you thought.

You had never felt so tortured by the thought of someone else before. You loved Zeke, but not even during your courtship with him had you felt this way. This felt like a desperate, possessive, clinging thing. You didn’t recognize it, and you feared the sight of it. Your parents had raised you to believe that love should be pure, just like God’s love for his children. This — whatever you felt for Eren — felt . . . decadent, and sinful, and dangerous.

That’s because you’re yearning, you could hear Eren whispering in your head. You’re coveting and craving and longing! Now you know how I feel.

Gritting your teeth, you forced the voice away and sat up. You stood up, tossed the covers aside, and slung your feet over the edge before you padded across the bedroom to the door. Once there, you slipped out into the hallway. You were thirsty. For a glass of water. Yes. A drink would help. Maybe these . . . delusions were just you becoming dehydrated? Maybe you needed to drink more water. Yes. That was it. It had to be.

The ticking of the grandfather clock in the foyer filled your ears as you navigated the stairs, careful to avoid the ones that screeched like cats getting their tails stepped on. At the bottom, you crossed the room diagonally to the kitchen. Rain pattered against the stained-glass windows on either side of the front door, casting amorphous shapes on the scuffed wooden floor.

Yawning, feeling tired despite the cruel denial of sleep, you entered the dark kitchen and made for the sink. Fetching a glass from a nearby cabinet, you filled it at the faucet before you turned to lean on the island countertop. You gazed out the windows and sipped from your glass as you tried to find shapes in the water that streamed down the windows.

Hearing your name whispered behind you, you jumped, stifled a shriek, and spun around to face your intruder. You exhaled with relief at the sight of Eren, but anxiety returned, hot and disquieting. You hadn’t expected to see him again that night. What was he doing up? Shouldn’t he still be with Historia?

“Eren,” you whispered as you swallowed, and your heart rate spiked with excitement just from looking at him. He was shirtless as he slinked into the kitchen, as fluid as the dancer he was, his glittering, emerald green eyes locked with yours. Your breath hitched, caught in your throat as if on a nail. Your hand rose to curl into a fist against your chest, right where your heart slammed. Around his neck hung a cloth cord, on which a golden key rested. It gleamed in the occasional bolt of lightning that lit up the room. Thunder rumbled in the distance, in your bones, in your heart. “Where’s Historia?”

He shook his head. “She’s not here. She left with the others a few hours ago.”

Confusion warred with pleasure within you. You felt warm. Had he sent her away because of you?

“Why did she not stay?”

He swallowed, and you saw his eyes linger on your mouth before they dragged back up to yours. You saw desire thicken in them and swallowed hard again. He neared, and you fought hard to keep your eyes on his, not wanting to give him any other excuse to continue chasing you in his head.

“Like you don’t know,” he whispered.

You shook your head. “I don’t.”

He smirked, amused. “You really need me to say it?”

You swallowed and nodded. “I do.”

His brows furrowed, and the amusement disappeared. “Why play this game?”

“Is it a game?” You asked. “I wasn’t aware we were even playing one.”

He released a breathless laugh, one that tempted forth a smile from you, even as his hand curled around the back of your neck. His other hand fell to your hip, and your breathing deepened as he stepped closer, so close, your bodies brushed. You weren’t wearing a robe. Just your usual shirt and sleep shorts, not even a bra. Your nipples hardened when they brushed across his bare chest. The key weighed heavy against your breastbone. Was it made of gold?

“In the end, I didn’t want her,” he breathed, and his words ghosted along your skin, tempting forth erupting gooseflesh. You shivered as he tilted your head back and ran his lips along your throat. “She’s not you, and I don’t want anyone who’s not you.”

You whimpered. A small, needy sound. One that seemed to echo in the still space around you. In its wake, he released a sigh and coaxed your face back down. His head tilted, your noses brushed, and you licked your lips and closed your eyes the split second before he kissed you.

The kiss started as something small and exploratory. Shy, almost. Gentle and coaxing. He coaxed open your mouth and coaxed your tongue around his. His taste flooded you — the spearmint from his toothpaste, and his mouthwash . . . still, you curled a hand around the corner of the cabinet behind you and squeezed hard as the kiss intensified. It deepened and gained a hunger that gnawed at your insides and threatened to tear you apart. It became claiming, with a needy desperation that had you huffing whimpers and whines into Eren’s mouth as he sighed against you and pulled you closer, as if he couldn’t get you close enough.

His hand on your hip pulled you closer until you stood flush against his front in an almost egregiously intimate way. Every part of you touched, from thighs to tits, so close you could feel how your kiss had begun to coax his cock to life. It felt like iron against your stomach as it throbbed against you, and you moaned and reached out to touch him. Not his cock, just your palm against his chest. He felt feverish, wanting, but that singular touch seemed to bring him back down into reality. He pulled away from you, gaze hooded and wanting, and you wondered if you looked the same.

His chest heaved. You felt like you had an elephant standing on yours. His hands on you felt claiming and branding, and you craved them on other parts of you.

But not that night, it seemed.

Eren closed his eyes and drew in a deep breath that filled his lungs. His eyes opened, and he ran his tongue along the seam of his lips. You followed the movement with hungry eyes, and he squeezed your hip.

“You need to go upstairs,” he whispered. “And go to bed.”

“Why?” You asked, confused. Now that he had you like this, was that it? Didn’t he want . . . more? You reached down to brush your fingers along his straining cock, and he released a low groan. His hand shot down to grab your wrist, stilling you, even as his hips tilted into your hand.

“No. Not . . . not like this,” he whispered. “I don’t want to have you like this, like some . . . dirty little secret in the dead of night on your kitchen counter.”

“Then how?” You asked as guilt suffused you. Now that the headiness of the situation — the tawdriness — had dissipated, you felt guilty. Maybe you were more like Zeke than you thought. The thought was jarring and sickening. You looked away from him. “However you look at it, Eren, that’s what this will be. Our dirty little secret.”

“Not like this,” he repeated as he shook his head. The firmness of his tone surprised you. “I don’t want you like this.”

You drew in a deep breath as your head tilted forward, and you felt Eren’s lips brush against your forehead as his hand rose to cradle your head.

“Not like this,” he whispered again, as if it were a litany that would come true if he whispered it enough. “Whatever this will be between us, it deserves more than this.”

You swallowed and tilted your head back to look at him. You reached up and guided his mouth back down to yours. He devoured your lips, his grip around you tightening again, but once more, he pulled back when it edged too close to the point of no return. His scent filled your nose, clouding your thoughts, and making you want nothing more than to stand there the entire night and kiss him like you were back in high school again, kissing your boyfriend at the lockers before class started.

“Tell me to go again,” you whispered, and watched the apple in his throat bob as he swallowed.

“I don’t want to,” he breathed, holding you close. His nose nudged yours, and his lips remained centimeters from your own again. You laughed and shook your head.

"You have to, Eren,” you said. “I’m too weak. If you don’t, I’ll stand here all night and kiss you.”

“You know what? That sounds like a fine idea,” he said before he kissed you again, and it felt slow and decadent this time, a kiss that resulted in a warm throb in your core that matched the one in his own pants pulsing against you. You wanted his hands between your legs — his mouth, too, if he’d permit it.

“But this is dangerous, isn’t it?” you breathed, as your head tilted back. He laughed, breathless, too, as you felt his lips run along your throat, the barest scrape of his teeth, the brush of his tongue.

“But I like danger,” he laughed, grinning even as he forced himself to step away from you—to put some much-needed distance between you. He shook his head, his eyes lazy and desirous as he drank you in. “And you, my little sinner, are the definition of dangerous.”

Chapter Text

“Guess I'm contagious, it'd be safest if you ran,
Fuck, that's what they all just end up doing in the end,
Take my car and paint it black,
Take my arm, break it in half,
Say something, do it soon,
It's too quiet in this room . . .”

-- “Blood in the Cut,” by K.Flay

I

The next three weeks were a masterclass in subtle, sublime mental torture. A cruel kind you could scarcely reconcile to yourself. One that threatened to drive you crazy; up-the-walls, even, like those characters possessed by demons and climbing up the walls of their rooms in horror movies.

Summer break had come, the saccharine end of all classes for at least two months until the next semester began. The summer was hot and muggy — sticky, almost—making you feel lazy and lethargic and indolent. The skies were blue and clear, cloudless, and you, fresh from classes and exams you had aced, were absolutely, irrevocably obsessed with Eren Yeager.

Zeke, of course, free from his class load, remained ridiculously busy with political work. Even as summer dragged on and he remained aloof and away from home, you hardly saw him. It was almost as if, where Zeke was concerned, university hadn’t even ended. You wondered if he was with Magdalena more, and this knowledge, strangely, didn’t bother you as much as it would have.

Your eyes were only on Eren.

It shocked you that Zeke didn’t notice the relationship blossoming between the two most important people in his life (or who he claimed were the two most important). Or maybe, you wondered, as you lazed around in the sunroom with your husband’s little brother, trailing ice cubes along the other’s bodies before tracing the rivers of water left behind with your tongues, he didn’t care enough to. It was a testament to how detached he had become from his family and from his home that such massive shit like what you and Eren were getting up to, flew under his radar.

Either way, it changed nothing.

II

The straw that broke the camel’s back came a few weeks after the semester ended. You had gone out to your car, already sweating buckets in the muggy summer heat, only to find that it wouldn’t start. Irritated, you tried to turn it on a few more times with nothing to show for it. You wondered if your battery was dead and then groaned with irritation. You needed to go to the grocery store if you and Eren (and maybe Zeke) wanted to eat for the next few days. Eren was out with his friends, and Zeke was God only knew where. Desperate, you called your best friend, Levi, and had him pick you up and take you to the grocery store. It wouldn’t have been the first time, after all, even if you had to deal with him silently judging all your life choices the entire time.

Eren came back that afternoon. He always came back. You didn’t doubt him. Zeke, however, didn’t, and by the time you had dinner made and the two of you were curled up on the couch together, lip-locked while reruns of your favorite show played on the TV, you had forgotten all about your dead car.

The heat between the two of you had escalated since your secret kiss in the kitchen. You hadn’t slept with him. That part of you remained pure, but it was an ordeal to endure. Every kiss drew you closer to him, and every make-out session made you want him more and more. Eren grew bolder too as time passed. He no longer kept his hands confined to your back or your hips, and above your clothes. Now, he explored you as he kissed you, running his hands over your body and underneath your clothes. The first time he touched your breasts, you felt winded and needy. Every time he teased his fingers along the hems of your shorts without slipping them inside, you felt like you were flirting with the devil. The thought of him slipping to his knees to the floor, ripping your shorts off you, and burying his mouth between your legs almost shook your resolve to the core.

Zeke did come home the next night, though. The twin beams of his headlights shone through the glass bracketing the front door, and Eren hurried to the other side of the kitchen — anything, you knew, to keep Zeke ignorant of the budding passion and undeniable chemistry that boiled between you.

You had just finished making dinner when your husband walked through the door. Seeming happy to see you, he placed his briefcase on the counter and crossed to you. He bent to kiss you, but you tilted your head at the last minute, so his lips fell on your cheek instead of your lips. You still tasted Eren’s mouth on your tongue and wondered, morbidly, if Zeke would, too, if you kissed him. You didn’t want to risk it.

Eren smiled, amused, as if he could read your mind.

“What’s for dinner?” Zeke asked as he stood behind you and wrapped his arms around your waist. He ducked his head and brushed his lips along the webbing connecting your shoulder to your neck. Heat bloomed across your cheeks as you felt Eren’s gaze burning into you from across the island countertop.

“Risotto,” you said before giving a shaky laugh, “You’re affectionate tonight.”

Zeke hummed as he swayed the two of you back and forth. “What?” He asked. “I can’t be affectionate with my wife?”

“Zeke,” you chided him, not liking the heavy, invasive feel of Eren’s eyes on you. “It’s not --”

“You two are gross,” Eren interrupted as he grabbed a bowl from the cabinet and filled it with food. “I’ll eat in my room. Be sure to keep it down, yeah?”

The heat in your cheeks burned hotter. You wanted to tell him to stop, to eat with you guys, that you didn’t want to be alone with Zeke, not when your anger still burned like a bushfire through your veins, but you didn’t. You couldn’t.

Eren avoided your gaze as he left the kitchen, leaving you and Zeke alone together. You watched him go despite the way your skin crawled at the feel of your husband’s lips on you.

They weren’t Eren’s.

“Zeke, please!” With a sigh, you pulled yourself away from him. You didn’t look at him as you stepped away to fetch bowls for the two of you. You could feel his eyes on you now, heavy and invasive and uncomfortable. “I’m on my period.”

He chuckled. “That’s never stopped us before. Has it?”

You winced. He was right. Zeke had never been the type to be turned off by a little blood. If anything, he used to joke, it was just added lubrication, and there was nothing wrong with that.

“Yeah, I know, but . . .” you trailed off and shrugged as you held out a bowl to him. “Cramps are really bad this month.” Zeke didn’t take the bowl until you looked at him. You swallowed and added, “Sorry.”

He nodded as he took it from you. His face was blank, his eyes unreadable behind his glasses. “No problem,” he whispered. “It’s just . . . we haven’t been intimate very often lately, have we?”

And whose fault is that? You thought, irritated. Sorry, asshole, if I don’t want to be fucked after someone else has fucked you!

“I know,” you nodded. “It’s just . . . classes were hard, and you’ve been so busy with your internship and your classes and . . . everything.”

He nodded as he moved over to the pot and began spooning risotto into his bowl. “I know. I’m sorry,” he said. “I’ve been . . . distracted lately.” He glanced at you. “Eren’s been treating you right, though, has he? He’s been keeping you company?”

You swallowed hard and nodded as memories flooded back into your mind, of you and Eren together, of his tongue in your mouth, his hand cupping your breast, his mouth on your nipple through the thin cotton of your shirt. The fire in his eyes as he looked at you and asked if you’d been a good little sinner.

“Yes,” you said, clearing your throat. “We’ve been getting along quite well.”

“Good. I’m glad,” Zeke smiled. “I was afraid for a moment you wouldn’t like him. Eren can be . . . hard to get along with sometimes.”

“I know what you mean,” you said as you took his place by the stove as he stepped away to fetch himself a spoon. You could completely understand why some people had difficulty getting along with Eren. His passion could be a little intense sometimes, but you didn’t mind it. If anything, you liked it. “But he’s fine. Things are going well between us.”

“Good,” Zeke said as he leaned against the counter, crossed his legs at the ankles, and dug into his food. He eyed you across the way as you leaned against the opposite counter and brought a spoonful to your mouth. “I’ll have to return to the office when I’m done here,” he said, almost as an afterthought. “My boss has a big case coming up, and we’ve been prepping like crazy for the last few weeks. That’s why I’ve been gone so much. I still have stuff to do back at the office, though. Just thought I’d come home and see how things have been going.”

“Are you sure you’re not just leaving because I turned down having sex with you?” You asked without looking up from your food, and a palpable silence fell between the two of you. “Gotta say, Zeke,” you laughed. “It feels really good to know I’m just a hole for you now instead of your wife. That I mean nothing to you anymore.”

“Are you being fucking serious right now?” he asked. “Really?”

“What?” You asked. “How else am I supposed to feel, Zeke? You’re always gone. You’re never home anymore, always at the office, and you only come back to eat my food and proposition me for sex. And you know what makes me laugh? You think I won’t notice you doing it. You think I’ll continue being your good little Stepford wife even though we’ve become strangers over the past God only knows how many months!”

Another heavy silence blanketed the room. You shifted beneath it, feeling its weight, becoming comfortable beneath it, before Zeke finally broke it. “Is that how you really feel?”

You rolled your eyes. “Don’t psychoanalyze me, Zeke. You know I hate that.”

He nodded. “Yeah. I do.” He said. He set his bowl aside. It sat on the counter beside him, still steaming and half-full of food. “You know, I’m doing this for you. For us. For our future family. Who do you think keeps the lights on? The water running, this roof over your head --?”

“Oh, fuck you, Zeke!” You snapped. “And the goddamn horse you rode in on!” You threw a hand toward the stairs. “You never fixed the bathroom door. Or the fucking kitchen sink! And now, my car’s sitting in the driveway fucking dead, and I have no idea why, and you’re never around --!”

“What do you want me to do about it?” He asked, eyes wide. “I’m not a mechanic --!”

You released an enraged scream and threw your bowl at him. He gasped and darted to the side right when it sailed over his head. It hit the far wall and exploded into pieces. Food lay caked on the wall and slid down to pool on the floor. You laughed.

“I swear to God, Zeke, that if I hear you say that you’re not a carpenter, or a plumber, or anything, I’m going to --!”

“Throw things at me like an emotionally stunted toddler?” He asked, and your nostrils flared as rage filled you.

“How was the food, Zeke?” You asked, doing your best to rein your emotions in. “Did it taste like Magdalena?”

You wished you could have captured a picture of Zeke’s face the moment you brought up the woman he had been cutting out on you with. He paled, as if a ghost had just walked across the room in front of him, and he stepped back from you, mouth agape. He shook his head. “How do you . . . I mean, I have no idea who you’re talking about.”

“Of course you don’t,” you sneered as you crossed your arms. “Don’t play stupid, Zeke. It doesn’t suit you, and it’s an insult to my intelligence.”

He gaped as he looked toward both exits, the one that led to the foyer and to the front door, as well as the side door that led to the driveway. You sighed and waved your hand. “Go ahead,” you said. “Leave. I don’t care. I’m done caring. You make me sick, Zeke. I don’t want to even look at you right now.”

Zeke said your name in a pleading tone that made your hands clench against your sides. “She means nothing to me!” he said, giving you two of the oldest excuses in the cheater’s playbook back-to-back. “I don’t love her! It’s just sex. I love you! You’re my wife! I married you, didn’t I?”

“Oh, yeah?” You asked. “And I’m what? Supposed to just sit by and be okay with you fucking other women?” You snorted. “Yeah, no, Zeke, that’s not gonna happen. Sorry to burst your bubble.”

He swallowed and straightened. He ran his hand down his front, down his button-down shirt, and righted his tie. “Right. Yes. Well, we can talk about this later,” he said. “When we’ve both calmed down.”

“What’s there to talk about, Zeke?” You asked. “I’m so fucking angry I can barely look at you. Where do we even go from here?”

“I don’t know,” he said. “But we’ll talk about it in the morning,” he said. “I’ll . . . I’ll stay at a hotel tonight and be back in the morning.”

“Or don’t,” you said as grabbed his briefcase. You shrugged. “I’m not lying when I say I don’t care anymore.”

He left and slammed the door shut behind him. You waited until you heard his car start and then back down the driveway before you moved. Turning to the sink, you fetched the roll of paper towels and spray bottle of cleaner as you heard the gentle sound of ceramic being placed on the counter. When you turned around, you saw Eren.

You swallowed. “How much did you hear?”

“Everything,” he said. “I never left. Not really. Just stayed outside the door, you know . . . in case you needed me.”

“Of course,” you laughed as you crossed to him. You swept past him and bent to pick up the shards of your bowl. “I handled that well, didn’t I?”

“I think you did quite well,” he replied. “Considering how long that knowledge has been eating you up inside.” He paused. “For a minute there, I’d thought you’d kill him, and then I’d have to spend the rest of the night hiding a body for you.”

“I won’t lie. The thought occurred to me,” you said as you stood and dumped the shards into the trash. “But then I realized it wouldn’t be worth it in the end. I’m not about to be locked up for life for that asshole.”

“Good,” Eren chuckled. “‘Cause it’d be hard to keep things going between us through a pane of glass and a shitty prison phone.”

You laughed again as you bent and cleaned the risotto from the wall. “Don’t worry, Eren,” you said. “I won’t give Zeke any kind of satisfaction anymore.”

Silently, he joined you and, after ripping off a line of paper towels, began dabbing at the blobs of food remaining. “I’m sorry,” you said. “If I hadn’t reacted like that --”

“Shut up,” Eren said while pressing a kiss to your head. “It’s all right.”

Together, you cleaned the food from the wall, and while you didn’t think there would be a stain there, you figured you’d see when daylight flooded the room the next morning. You stood there awkwardly before you scooped up the pot of risotto and stuck it in the fridge. Your argument with Zeke had robbed you of your hunger. Leftovers it would be, then.

You jumped when you felt Eren’s hand slide into yours. “Come on,” he said with a gentle tug on your hand as he jerked his head toward the stairs. “Let’s go fix your bathroom door.”

Chapter Text

“Touch me, yeah,
I want you to touch me there,
Make me feel like I am breathing,
Feel like I am human,

She sought death on a queen-size bed,
And he had said, “Darling, your looks can kill,
So now you’re dead . . .”

— “A Little Death,” by The Neighbourhood

I

You sat on the edge of your bed and watched Eren fix your bathroom door while you nervously smoothed out wrinkles on the duvet cover. He had left only a few times to rummage around in Zeke’s tools out in the garage before he returned, ready to get the job done. Meanwhile, you watched every movement of his and felt like your heart was in your throat the entire time. And when he finished, and the door swung shut on well-oiled hinges and didn’t stick or squeak, he grinned at you and winked.

“See?” he said. “No big deal. Easy ten-minute fix.”

You nodded and smiled and thanked him, then the two of you stood there and gazed at each other in silence, like two actors standing across from each other on stage while waiting for their lines to hit. As you sat there, his gaze slowly raked you, from your eyes to your heaving breasts and the dip of your waist and the swell of your hips — the length of your legs hanging off the side of your bed.

“Like what you see?” You asked, attempting to be coy, but with the way your heart slammed in your chest, you weren’t sure how successful you were. Luckily, he seemed unfazed. He smiled as he crossed his arms and leaned against the mended door.

“I do,” he said. “I’d like what I saw even more if you weren’t wearing any clothes.”

A hot spike of need slammed into your core. Stifling a grin and feeling emboldened by what you had said to Zeke earlier, you rose to your feet. You pulled your shirt over your head and, after you unbuttoned and unzipped your shorts, allowed them to fall to the floor. You stepped out of them, clad in only your favorite lacy bra and panty set, and as you ran your hands over your breasts, you saw his eyes darken with want.

“Take ‘em off,” he said. “And then lay back on the bed. Spread your legs.” He smirked. “You want to give me a show, little sinner?”

Heat inflamed your face. You’d never touched yourself in front of someone before, not even Zeke. You had always done that in private, with just you and your favorite toy and whatever fantasy occupied your head. The thought of doing it now, in front of Eren . . . it thrilled you and intimidated you, all at once. Your fingers toyed with the hemline of your panties as you debated the merits of it in your head while Eren’s gaze remained locked on you. After a moment, you thought, fuck it, and pushed your panties down your legs. As his gaze trailed down your body, you saw his throat bob, knowing he wanted to reach for you. You removed your bra, sighing as your breasts fell free, nipples tightening in the cool air. Then, you turned and climbed onto the bed.

Your heart thumped in your chest as you adjusted the pillows against the headboard when, really, you knew it was just you stalling. He chuckled, giving you the impression he was very much aware of what you were doing, and you bit the bullet. Turning, you fell back against the pillows, and he shifted against the door as his eyes returned to yours.

“Show me what you do to yourself,” he said, his voice smooth and silken and like molten gold. “When you think of me.”

“When I think of you?” You asked, and he smirked and nodded.

“You heard me, little sinner. But keep your eyes on me, okay?”

You swallowed hard and kept your eyes trained on him as you trailed your fingers across your lips. “You kiss me,” you said, and he nodded.

“We’ve been doing that a lot, haven’t we?” he asked, and you nodded as your hand trailed down, fingers running along your neck and throat to your collarbones.

“You kiss me here, too.” He didn’t speak that time as your hands continued along your body. When they ran over your breasts, you sighed as you cupped and massaged them. Warmth bloomed in your core as you ground your thighs together to relieve the ache. “Then your hands are on my tits . . . your mouth on my nipples . . .”

“Such pretty tits, too,” he said, and had you imagined how heavy his breathing seemed? “Can’t wait to taste them. To have your nipples in my mouth.”

You saw it then, the tight tenting of his sweats where his cock had come to life, throbbing along with the pulse in your core. You were wet already, craving him with an intensity that was almost frightening. When you spread your legs, you watched his throat bob as his eyes dropped to your glistening sex. He bit back a groan. You could hear his foot tapping against the hardwood floor, drumming like an addict waiting for his next fix.

“When I touch myself, I think of your mouth on me,” you said as your hand trailed down your stomach. You slipped your fingers down between your thighs, gliding along your wetness to your clit. Rolling the sensitive bud beneath your fingers, your breath hitched as you heard Eren’s barely stifled groan. “Your tongue on my clit . . . your fingers in my pussy . . .”

His hand dropped then. He cupped himself through his sweats, and you wished he’d take them off. You wanted to see his cock, which had been, until then, nothing more but a temptation and a frustrating fantasy for the past few weeks.

“Put your fingers in your pussy, baby,” Eren breathed. “Can you make yourself come with them, or do you need mine?”

You moaned as you slipped your two middle fingers inside yourself, crooking them upward in search of the spot you knew did it for you. The spot you had fantasized Eren hitting over and over again. He groaned again as he massaged himself through his sweats, eyes glued between your legs while yours remained on his face.

You swallowed in a bid to inject moisture into your mouth and nodded. “Oh, yeah, I can come from them,” you said. “But I want yours!”

Eren released a breathless laugh as he crossed to the bed. He pushed down his sweats once he reached you, and the sight of his cock slapping against his stomach made you feel breathless. Eren and Zeke were similar to each other, both men a little above average, but where Zeke had been skinny, the thickness of Eren’s cock made the pulsing in your core worse. It was veiny, with a nice upward curve you knew was going to feel amazing inside you.

“Come over here, baby,” he said as he wrapped his hand around his cock, holding it steady. “And wrap your pretty lips around me while you keep touching yourself.”

You smiled, feeling wicked, as you rose onto your hands and knees and crawled over to him. He backed up as you sat on the edge of the bed and opened your legs. He stepped between them as your fingers returned to your clit. You licked long stripes along his length as he moaned and buried his hand in your hair. At the feel of his fingers tightening against your scalp, you moaned and drew his head past your lips. You bobbed slowly along his length, cheeks hollowing as you sucked him and rolled circles around your clit. Your moans reverberated along his cock, tightening his hand in your hair and deepening his moans into groans.

The taste of his pre-come exploded across your tastebuds as you swirled your tongue around his head. He groaned, and his hand tightened in your hair. Pleasure thumped through your blood, exacerbated by your fingers moving between your legs. He flexed his hips in a gentle thrust, drawing his cock in and out of your mouth in a slow drag that only fueled the warmth that churned in your core. You were so close, and judging by his soft, needy groans and the way his cock jerked in your mouth, he was close, too.

His hand exerted pressure on your hair as if he wanted to pull you off him before he could come, but you released a sound of refusal and shook your head. The hand not currently between your legs lifted to grip his hip. You wanted his come in your mouth — you wanted to taste it. A needy whimper dropped from his lips, a sound that seared across your very soul, and his hand came down to clench around your wrist as he stiffened and jerked. His cock swelled in your mouth, and you drew back to suck his head as his come flooded you. You moaned around him, he shuddered, and it was as you swallowed the load he had given you that you felt yourself pushed back against the bed.

His shoulders buffeted against your thighs, and then you felt his mouth on your pussy, on your clit, taking the place of your fingers. You shuddered and twitched as you came, already so on edge, and he groaned as he lapped at the wetness coating you before his tongue returned to your clit. He drew it into his mouth in a warm, wet suck as his fingers trailed along your slit. He coated them in your slick before he pushed them into you. You gasped and arched your back against the bed as your hands flew down to his hair. They curled upward as they moved in search of that spot, and heat roared back to life in your core.

You still tasted him in your mouth as you gasped his name and ground yourself against his face. Your thighs quivered on either side of his head, kept apart by his shoulders, and his free hand planted on one of them. He was tenacious as he devoured you whole with his lips and tongue, like your pussy was a ripe fruit he couldn’t get enough of, and good God, he was so good at it! Or maybe you were just pent-up and horny and were willing to take whatever you could get. You weren’t sure.

Warmth cascaded over you when you came again, climaxing hard into his groaning mouth. He lapped at you again, desperate to lick up every drop of your release as if he were a man dying of thirst in the desert. His hand clenched around your thigh, his rings cold against your overheated skin. He inched up, mouth still connected to you, and shoved your legs back against your chest. You whimpered as he made you come like that, again and again, until you thought you’d grow crazy from the unrelenting pleasure he forced through your body. Your thighs felt impossibly wet, slick dribbled down the crack of your ass — you could only imagine the wet spot you were leaving on the duvet beneath you, and still, he continued, unceasing, unrelenting, until you’d finally had enough. Twitching with overstimulation, you shoved him away and scooted back along the bed, gasping for breath and wild-eyed, like a blown horse.

He called you the sinner, his little sinner, but God, he looked debauched at that moment, like sin personified, like the devil made flesh. The way he gazed at you, pupils blown wide and hungry — so hungry — made your insides twist. You followed his tongue as he traced it along the seam of his mouth — as he licked the taste of your pussy from his lips — and you’d thought the sight was enough to strike you dead. You’d never seen Zeke like that, so overcome with need and desire, and thought you’d never tire of seeing it on Eren. He wore it so well.

“How do you want me?” He asked, and you shook your head and swallowed as you raced to calm yourself and regather your thoughts.

“Eren, please,” you said. “I need a minute, I need–”

“No,” he said, shaking his head, as he stood. He pushed his sweats down his legs and off him before he pulled his shirt over his head. The sight of him bare before you dried the spit in your mouth, and when he returned to the bed, you could only gape at him. How was it possible that he was so beautiful? “I need you now.”

You wanted to trace his abdominals with your tongue, to devour him again like he had devoured you, but you knew by the look in his eyes that it would have to come another day. Your pussy ached for his thick cock, and without further thought, you reached up and yanked over a pillow (Zeke’s, to be exact). He watched you with interest as you plopped it on the bed and then lay down on top of it. You lifted your hips and adjusted the pillow beneath them, and when he realized what you were doing, he released a breathless, delighted laugh.

“Oh, so you want me deep!” he said as he lifted himself onto the bed and hovered over you. Amusement flickered in his eyes as he gazed down at you. “Think you can take me that deep, little sinner?”

You swallowed and nodded, and he grinned as he scooped your legs up with his arms and leaned down to kiss you. He had you bent double in a mating press that threatened to steal your breath away, and it would have if his kiss hadn’t already accomplished it. This close, he smelled of sweat, and sex, and white tea and sage from his cologne. As his tongue delved past your lips, the taste of him in your mouth sharpened until it overtook all else. You felt the coolness of his rings against you as he guided his cock to your pussy and you felt your breath robbed from you a second time when he filled you, slowly, an inch at a time, until he had reached his base and he had you so stuffed full of him your head spun.

“Yeah, look at you,” he whispered, grinning against your lips. “You did so well, taking all of me like this.”

You squirmed beneath him, feeling overheated and desperate. The stretch of him felt all-consuming. If he didn’t move soon, you thought you’d combust beneath him.

He planted his hand on your stomach, where he had lodged himself so deep within you, and eased down as he rocked against you. A moan jerked itself from your lips as your head fell back and your eyes fluttered shut. “Do you feel me here?” He breathed as he leaned down to run his lips along your throat. “Do you feel how deep I am?”

“Eren,” you moaned as your heart slammed against your chest. “Eren, please!”

Sex with Zeke had been nothing like this. And as Eren thrust into you, over and over again while his hand dropped between your slick thighs to play with your clit as he fucked you, you wondered how you had ever lived without sex like this.

You clung to him as the feeling of him inside you churned the heat within your core tighter and tighter until you teetered over the precipice again. You had come so many times that night, but this one felt huge and intimidating. Something built within you, a pressure demanding release, and you whimpered as you clung to him.

“Eren,” you said. “Eren, I don’t know --”

“Shhh, it’s okay,” he said as he bent to kiss you again, sweeter this time than all the other times. “I’ve got you, baby, I promise. So come for me, okay? Come for me — come for me so hard --!”

 Your orgasm when it hit you was white. Pure, static whiteness that cut the cords between your body and soul and filled your ears with roaring cotton. Your nails scrabbled against his chest, and your mouth opened in a wordless scream as pleasure grabbed you and shook you like a dog with a bone. Wetness burst between you, soaking his hips and stomach, and he groaned as he buried his hands in your sweaty hair and cradled your head as he kissed you. His hips continued to move, fucking you through it as he continued to fuck himself closer to his own climax.

It didn’t take long. His rhythm changed, growing desperate and off-kilter. “Where,” he asked before a strained groan cut him off. His thumb pressed between your lips and disappeared into your mouth, and you sucked on it like you had his cock as he groaned again. “Fuck. Where do you want me to come?”

Your pussy clenched around him in response, making him swear again as he withdrew his thumb. “Inside me.” You said.

His eyebrows shot up. “Are you sure?”

You nodded. The thought of him filling you, of stuffing you full of his come, almost, almost coaxed you into another orgasm. “I’m sure,” you replied. “Please, Eren. I’m safe. How do you think Zeke and I have avoided having kids?”

The uncertainty on his face eased, and the line of his shoulders relaxed. His eyelids grew heavy as the speed of his thrusts increased. He chased his orgasm with the same tenacity with which he had chased every single one of yours. He groaned and cradled your jaw in his palm.

“Gonna come,” he gasped. “Fuck. Can’t wait to fill you up, baby. Till you’re leaking.”

You whimpered and wrapped your arms around him, holding him close as he reached his peak. He stiffened and groaned your name. His hips stilled, quaking between yours as his own pleasure gripped him tight. He released your legs, and they fell, limp and boneless, to the bed. You winced as pins and needles set in along with your blood circulation but didn’t release him. You couldn’t. It seemed impossible.

After a moment of quiet contemplation, of minutes spent regaining your breath and your thoughts, you felt his lips against your neck. “I love you,” he whispered, so quiet that you thought you had misheard him or imagined it. Then he repeated it, louder, so you wouldn’t miss it, and something warm and fluttery came to life in your chest. “God, baby, I’ve loved you since the moment I met you!”

“I love you, too, Eren,” you replied as you ran your fingers through his hair and guided his mouth back to yours. “I want you. All of you. All the time. Forevermore.”

He grinned against your mouth, and you knew then that he had a plan.

II

Eren fixed your car and replaced the battery with a spare you had lying around your garage. Before the two of you left, stealing away into the night together like some tawdry harlequin romance, you left Zeke a letter on the island countertop. Nothing big, just something to explain your absence when he arrived home that morning and found you and Eren gone. In it, you explained why you weren’t coming back or would have any sort of contact with him except through your divorce lawyer.

You felt particularly proud of the postscript you left at the bottom.

I know this is sudden, and that it’s gonna hit you hard. Which is why we made sure you won’t have to worry about the bathroom door, or the garbage disposal, or my car. Eren fixed them all. What’s funny is that when I asked what I could do for him in return, he said, “Well, you can bake me a cake or sleep with me.”

And, well . . . you know as well as I do, Zeke, sweetie, that I’m not a baker.