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“The Devil has the wings of a vampire bat, an animal that sucks the lifeblood out of its prey, symbolic of what happens when you give in to your raw desires. He has a hypnotic stare which ‘magnetises’ and entrances those who come near him, bringing them under his power.” -Brigit Esselmont, Devil Tarot Card Meanings
~~~
The Raft is the armpit of the world.
You’re almost impressed with how your employers managed to sell you on it, though. They painted a picture of an institution floating in the sea, far from crowds and with lovely ocean views, insinuating that they would afford you a private suite and plenty of downtime, in exchange for your services as the in-house psychologist. Boy, how you’d been duped.
It’s been a month now of no sun, no fresh air, and absolutely no decent human contact. The people around you are detestable, so much so that you’d rather throw yourself into the ocean than let them touch you. You have a bunk in the female officer’s quarters with a little curtain that slides shut, and that’s the extent of your privacy. There’s only one window you’ve seen on the entire hell boat, and it’s in the Warden’s office… five stories above you. Behind a locked door.
You’re fucking miserable.
Are you happy to help? Well, that depends on whether or not you’re really helping. The criminals here aren’t exactly the kind that can be rehabilitated, and furthermore, that doesn’t seem to be your job description. There’s no reason to rehabilitate them; they’re in here for life. Really, you’re just there to analyze them. To figure out how their minds work so that, hopefully, your research can help the good guys catch more of the bad guys. Or, something like that.
You’re not too sure. It isn’t like the guards and prison officials surrounding you are any better than the criminals you’re psychoanalyzing. On a daily basis, you’re stuck listening to the ramblings of an ex-assassin, or you’re being inundated with misogynistic taunts by your so-called “colleagues.” As much as you hate to admit it, you think you’re starting to prefer the ramblings.
There’s one particular prisoner who intrigues you more than the others, though.
You can’t say that you like the Baron. He gets on your nerves more than anything. Despite the many times you ask him to refer to you as “Doctor,” he insists on calling you a litany of pet names; “Moja dragă,” “My darling,” “My dear,” and on one occasion, “My love.” Always possessive. Always with a hint of fire in his rasping voice.
Baron Helmut Zemo is a bit of an enigma to you. He obviously has a moral compass; it comes with the area of avenging one’s family. He’s remorseful of the innocent lives he’s taken, but that remorse only goes so far. His disdain for superheroes, particularly the Avengers, remains.
“Would you take it back, given the chance?” You’d asked him once.
“What’s done cannot be undone,” had been his chilling reply.
Despite this, he remains infuriatingly polite to you. He makes a point of asking you how you’re doing when you walk in the room, like your positions are flipped. He’s impossibly perceptive, seeming to pick up on the gradual decline of your mood over the weeks you’ve spent on the Raft, until one day he foregoes the small talk entirely.
“You’ve been crying,” he says before you’re even fully in the room.
The cell door hisses as it locks behind you, and you raise your eyes to him apprehensively. Yes, you had been crying merely ten minutes ago, wiping roughly at your cheeks in the ruddy lavatory mirror and trying every trick in the book to make it look like you hadn’t been. But he didn’t need to know that.
“No, Baron, I haven’t.” You seat yourself in the folding chair that’s been placed in the cell across from his (enviously) sizable bed for this exact meeting.
He tuts, tapping his fingers against his knee. “That’s the first time you’ve lied to me, my dear.”
Your gaze is fixed to the floor, because you fear that if you look at him and find him analyzing you with those admittedly gorgeous eyes of his, you may demonstrate that lie. “How many times must I ask you to call me, ‘Doctor?’”
“As many times as you wish to,” he replies without a moment’s pause. “Tell me why you’ve been crying.”
You give him an incredulous chuckle, and it sounds a little too strained for comfort. “It’s no concern of yours. I have no interest in your pity.”
“Who says I pity you?”
You squeeze your eyes shut tight, so tight that a tear dribbles out against all your effort. He makes it so hard for you to despise him, and somehow, that fact makes you despise him more. When you open your eyes, more tears spill down your cheeks like you’ve opened the floodgates.
The Baron’s expression remains reserved, almost like he was expecting your outburst, as he uses one hand to lift an unused handkerchief from the tray beside him that holds his half-eaten breakfast. He extends his hand and dangles the cloth between you like a white flag, watching you without saying another word.
Your eyes flit between his steady gaze and the white cloth as he rolls it between his long fingers, searching for any kind of deception he may be attempting in the small gesture. Hesitantly, you reach to take it from him, keeping your eyes on his extended hand in case he decides to try anything tricky.
He doesn’t. But your breath hitches in your throat when his fingers brush yours, his hot touch dragging along your skin a bit longer than necessary.
“I’m not permitted to tell you much about it,” you say as you wipe your tears away, not because you feel you owe him an explanation, but because you think you may burst at the seams if you don’t. “But we may see more of each other in the coming month.”
“Ah,” he nods, folding his hands in his lap. “They’ve extended your contract.”
You say nothing. You can’t confirm or deny it to him, especially with cameras pointed at you from all sides, but yes, yes they had. The Warden strongarmed you in his office, in front of that forsaken little window (as if it wasn’t already torture enough), water droplets running down the bulletproof glass as the expanse of the ocean stretched on. You had no choice. You were signed for another month on the Raft, just when you thought the end was in sight.
Your silence seems to speak volumes to him. “You’ve been here far too long already, my darling.”
You clap the handkerchief over your face, your elbows falling to rest on the notebook across your lap. You shake your head in vain, like that’s going to negate where the conversation’s gone. You can feel the hot tears seeping into the fabric, and the last thing you want to do is appear fragile to a murderer; although, you think it’s a bit late for that.
“It has been too long since you’ve felt the sun on your skin,” he continues quietly in his delicate tone. “I imagine you must be very lonely.”
His words give you pause, and you can hear his breathing still, waiting for you to reply. You scrub the handkerchief down your face, likely leaving your cheeks and eyes red, and glare at him from beneath your lashes. “None of it matters.”
“But it does,” the Baron replies smoothly, tilting his head to the side. “It matters to me immensely.”
You smile cynically, jamming the end of your pen down onto the pad of paper before you scribble, ‘ Prisoner showing signs of delusion.’ “Is that so?”
“Yes.” He gazes at you for a long time, the deep brown irises of his eyes glinting in the fluorescent light. “I, too, know the struggle of isolation. In many ways, you and I are the same.”
The laugh that leaves your mouth is airy as you try to ignore the flush creeping across your face at his intense gaze. “You and I are nothing alike, Baron.”
“Aren’t we?”
“No.”
“We’re both prisoners to this place.”
Your eye twitches as you look back up at him. “I make it a point not to compare myself to criminals.”
“I’m sure you’re hesitant to. What was it that the serpent said?” A smile crosses his face, and he leans toward you, resting his elbows on his knees. “‘Ye shall not surely die: for God doth know that in the day ye eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil.’”
Your pen scratches along the page with your disjointed handwriting. “Are you comparing yourself to a devil, now?”
“As you like it, my dear.”
You’re unable to write down another note, as the cell suddenly goes dark. Red emergency lights blink on in their place, as somewhere down the corridor a siren begins to blare.
You jump, and turn in your seat to squint through the glass wall, looking for some sort of cue from the guards outside the cell door, only to see them taking off at a run in the direction of the siren.
“It seems the power is out.”
You turn back to the Baron and find him smiling at you, lit from above by a singular red bulb. The sight is terrifying, and yet…
“Did you do this?” you whisper, shifting slightly in your seat against the unwarranted ache in your core.
You think you imagine it, but you can almost swear that his eyes flicker down to your hips at the miniscule movement. “I have no idea what you mean.”
“Enough with the games.” You stand up, towering over his seated form while your notebook clatters to the floor. “Did you do this?”
The whites of his eyes glow red in the light, blazing up into yours. “No. But if I had,” he says lowly, rising from his seat to regain the high ground, looming over you, “I can’t think of a more appropriate time for a lockdown.”
You can feel the heat radiate from his body, and it’s maddening. You take a step back from him, trying to rid yourself of it, trying to rid yourself of the need to touch him. But he steps forward with you, and his heat follows.
“Damn you, Baron,” you curse, backing further away from him, around the folding chair.
The Baron kicks it out of the way. “Already damned.”
You stare into his dark eyes, breath quickening as his hand brushes along your arm. “I hate you.”
“I’m sure that you do.” He tilts his head as your back presses against the far wall, and his fingers stroke along the smooth line of your shoulder to your neck. “Regardless, you desire to be touched, do you not?”
Your eyes flicker down to see the edge of his hand as his thumb trails tantalizingly along your jaw. He smells of expensive cologne and cheap, industrial soap, the juxtaposition of a rich man in a poor position. His thumb and forefinger find your chin, and tilt your head back so that you look into his smoldering eyes once again.
“You have been such a good girl.” Your thighs clench together at the words he’s purring at you. “Following orders, doing your job. You can afford one indescretion, yes?”
You open your mouth, but the only thing that comes out of it is a breathy sigh when the fingers of his other hand begin to drag up your thigh against the flimsy fabric of your pencil skirt. His thumb glides along your bottom lip, bringing with it the dampness of your saliva.
“What can I do to help you?”
You’re almost embarrassed at how wet you are, how you can feel the slick seeping through your panties and along your inner thighs. Your cunt throbs, clenching down pathetically on nothing as his fingers stroke just barely over the fabric, and your mind cycles through what you know to be true.
You know that in lockdown procedures, the cell is unable to be opened. Nobody goes in, and nobody comes out. You know that, because the main power is out, the cameras aren’t working. Nobody is watching.
You know that he’s offering you a choice.
And you know that you want him. Desperately.
You swallow then, feeling your throat tighten, and watch the Baron’s smile grow when you take the hand that’s brushing along your hip and guide it under the hem of your skirt. “A wise decision, my love.”
You can’t help yourself, trying to save face. “I’m not your love.”
“No,” he agrees as his other hand follows suit, pushing up your skirt and tugging your panties down, guiding them down your thighs to fall the rest of the way to your feet. “But you will be.”
The heat of his hand is searing as it glides along the outside of your leg and pulls it to wrap around his waist. Then, as slow and torturous as he can possibly be, the Baron runs the back of his two fingers through your dripping folds.
“Oh, you poor thing,” he purrs as his knuckles roll across your clit, eyes following your expression of desperation, his brows quirking up at the needy, shuddering gasp that falls from your lips. “It’s been such a long time, hasn’t it?”
He nods at the same time you do, as if he’s puppeteering your movements. You can feel how much of your slick has coated his two fingers, and it’s horrifying how much more he can coax from you with his hands, his proximity, his smell.
He’s the only person in this damn prison that you’ve allowed to touch you. And he knows it.
He pumps his two fingers into you, and it’s all you can do not to scream at the feeling. Fucking finally. You could probably have gotten away with it there in the barracks with that wispy little partition blocking you from view, hand down your pajama pants, but you still had to hear everyone; all the other officers you absolutely despised, talking and moving around, and it was never right. But this is. Somehow, this is right. Pushed up against a wall in a cell with a villain between your legs.
Your hand scratches down his arm when he curls his fingers, your head rolling back against the wall, a hoarse cry breaking in your throat. He’s unbelievably good at this, stroking within you like he’s known your body all along.
Heat begins to build in your core, and your leg tightens around his waist. “I won’t last,” you splutter out, your hands gripping his shoulder like a vice. “I’m gonna come.”
You don’t hear the Baron hum as much as you feel the vibration of it against your chest, where it’s crushed up against his. “Do you want to come on my fingers?”
Your eyes snap open, finding his in the low, red light. They’re still so shrewd, so unwavering as he continues his rhythmic pumping inside of you, and you know what he’s insinuating.
“No.”
As soon as you say the word, his fingers are out of you. You nearly sob at the loss, but you’re suddenly distracted by the sight of him lifting his glistening hand to his lips and sucking your juices from them. You collapse back against the wall, your cunt pulsing with aching want to see his eyes flutter shut as his fingers slide slowly from his groaning mouth.
His hand thuds to the wall just beside your head and his eyes bore into yours, brimming with pure lust. “What do you want to come on, my dear?”
You swallow thickly, chest heaving and head spinning. “Your cock.”
He tilts his head, eyes flitting to take in your features in the dim light, a teasing smile playing on his lips. “Are you entirely sure?”
“What’s the matter, Baron?” you ask, narrowing your eyes at his taunt. “Prison make you soft?”
A growl leaves his mouth at that, and his free hand finds the leg that’s holding you up and steady. You’re suddenly yanked against him, both legs wrapped around his waist as he crushes you back against the wall, pressing his hips against yours, and… Oh.
“Hardly.”
Your breath stutters in your chest, heart pounding. You can already feel through his prison scrubs how massive he is, and the thought has you suddenly spiralling. Mouth open in an airy sigh, your hands weave into his hair and tug, making him jolt his hips forwards against yours again.
“Don’t start something you can’t finish, my darling,” he whispers roughly, his lips so close to yours that you can taste his breath.
“Who says I’m not gonna fucking finish?” You tug again and the Baron hisses through his teeth as his hand leaves your thigh just long enough to pull himself free of his trousers.
“Have care what you say next.” The tip of his cock presses against your entrance, and your head knocks back against the wall while a needy moan rips from your throat.
“Oh god.” You say it without thinking when he pushes just slightly into you, and your walls flutter at the blissful stretch he gives you.
“There’s no god here, dragă,” he replies, and his voice is absolutely wretched, his usual rasp turned to a carnal growl. “Only me.”
He snaps his hips forward into yours, and your cry is almost louder than the emergency sirens blaring throughout the prison. You can hear his loud groan, his fingers tightening on your thighs so hard you imagine they’ll leave bruises in their wake.
With your eyes closed, you focus on the feeling of your cunt pulsing around him, wonderfully long and thick, and he slowly draws back as you bear down on him. “Fuck.”
The Baron’s lips brush your chin as he mumbles, “Let’s see how long you last with that filthy mouth of yours.” And then his hips snap into yours deliciously hard, grinding your back against the wall.
You let out a pathetic wail, entirely unconcerned at the noise you’re making with all the ruckus of the lockdown blaring around you. You can feel the Baron’s breath billowing across your bared neck, coming out in harsh puffs against your skin. With his thrusts driving you up the wall and his fingers digging into your skin, you’re at a loss for how you didn’t succumb to him earlier.
You wonder if you dreamt of this.
“Do you still hate me?” His roughened voice vibrates along the curve of your jaw, as though he has his teeth bared to say it.
“No.” Did you ever really hate him? You’re not sure. Thoughts don’t come easily through the fog of lust clouding your senses.
“I thought so.” The Baron’s tone is so patronizing, so sure. That’s one hell of an ego he’s got, and yet it’s only serving to spur you on.
Heat is blazing in your core, the balls of your feet digging into his lower back, your heels knocked off in the haste of the position ages ago. You give another hoarse cry as a particularly well aimed thrust hits the perfect spot within you, muscles tightening in ecstacy around him.
“Look at me.”
His voice is so insistent, so desperate, you have to do what it says. You tilt your head down and look at his face to find him gazing at you in awe, mouth open in exertion, half lit by the red lights and half in shadow.
It’s beautiful.
Your release is shocking, almost blinding, as your hands grasp violently along his shoulders, up his neck, and finally clutch the sides of his face to pull him into a crushing kiss, muffling your cries as you moan into his open mouth. He returns the kiss with such a fever that it occurs to you that he was simply waiting for you to kiss him first… always the gentleman, always so polite.
He groans, and you’re met with the erotic rush of being filled as he comes, driving into you suddenly harder and faster than before. Your fingers rake through his hair as you throb around him, his mouth swallowing your desperate cries until you manage to come down.
The Baron’s hips slow and eventually still, and he simply holds you there against the wall, his forehead pressed to yours when he finally pulls his mouth away from you. His hot breath mingles with yours, and after a few short pants, you hear him whisper, “Heaven.”
You whimper when he pulls out of you, and he presses another gentle kiss to your lips as he sets you down, ensuring you’re steady on your feet before he adjusts your skirt back down around your hips and releases your weight.
You’re vaguely aware of him tucking himself back into his trousers when the lights blink back on, and a shocking, ringing silence replaces the previous caterwahl of alarms. You blink disorientedly against the light, still a bit sluggish from the post-orgasm fatigue.
Then the Baron’s large hands are on your face again, and he’s capturing you in another heated kiss. Your hands scratch down his chest, instinctively searching for more contact that they will never experience, because when he breaks away from you, his eyes are solemn.
“Enjoy the sun for me, my love.”
You blink up at him as his hands continue to cradle your face, thumbs brushing your cheekbones as though they’re trying to memorize the contours of it. Your brow furrows in confusion, eyes searching his face for some inkling as to what the hell he means by that.
And then you hear it. The shouting, the thunderous footsteps. Your name being called. Various insults and commands being shouted in conjunction with, “ Zemo!”
“You planned this, didn’t you? So that they’d cancel my contract.” Your voice is barely above a whisper. Maybe he didn’t plan the entire lockdown, but it doesn’t take a genius to read the Baron’s body language as he backs away from you, slowly raising his hands in the air.
Baron Helmut Zemo smiles at you, and gives you an encouraging nod as three prison guards enter the cell to bind him in handcuffs.
“Goodbye, Doctor.”