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“In [Justice’s] left hand, the scales (always related to balanced judgement); in her right, a double-edged sword which cuts two ways, indicating that action is required to penetrate matter and inform it.” -Eden Gray, The Tarot Revealed
~~~
“I imagined you would find your way to me, eventually.”
The room is unnecessarily dark, lit only by a small fireplace in the corner that doesn’t seem to have enough life left in it to illuminate more than a couple feet in each direction. A soft autumn rain thumps irregularly against the plexiglass skylight on the sloped ceiling, but the darkness of night negates the window’s purpose.
Sam’s safehouse is many things. Comfortable, secluded, decently stocked… but safe is something else altogether, considering the company you find yourself in.
When you give the Baron no answer, but look nervously away, his smirk extends into an almost malignant grin. His dark eyes nearly glow from the inside out as he takes in the sight of you, all but cowering with your back against the heavy oak door that you just locked behind you. “The scales always tend to even out in the end, don’t they?”
You can’t help but feel like the ‘scales’ have surpassed balance and have tipped in Zemo’s favor. You think, even more, they began to tilt that way back in Riga. The day that you woke up with Bucky in your arms, his head stuffed into the crook of your neck on the floor of the Baron’s generously sized guest room. The Turkish rug scratching against your skin as you slipped from beneath him to let him rouse on his own after yet another night of decent sex.
Because it was decent. He was decent. Physically, anyways. Emotionally, well...
The Baron had seemed to sense this, when you ran into him in the kitchen. You suppose he has a talent for reading people’s emotions, but his voice had been oddly gentle when he asked you, “Does he fulfill you, draga?”
“Who?” had been your intellectual reply as you watched him pour hot water into a percolator. You knew who he was referring to, but you didn’t have a retort in place for the situation.
“James,” he clarified, as if he didn’t notice your playing dumb. He rounded to meet your eye, and you found his unnervingly warm towards you. “Does he know your body as well as you do, and your mind even better? Does he treasure you as he should? He is good to you, to be sure. He is a good man, and I have no doubt that he satisfies you- but when he holds you, does he feel like home?”
You didn’t answer his question, but you assumed it was rhetorical anyway. “Is there a proposition in there somewhere, Baron?”
His quiet laugh lingered in the air between you as he poured fresh coffee into a crystal cup, and pushed it into your hand. “Only if you want there to be.”
And you want there to be. God, how you want it. You want it so badly you can almost taste it.
It’s not simply that you feel “neglected” by Bucky- your relationship has no labels, and you know too well that Bucky is not in a place for anything serious, so it would be irrational to be angry about that. What irks you most of all is that the entire time, between Bucky taking his leave to jetset between New York and Louisiana, and you going back home to do fuckall until Bucky would inevitably call on you again for… whatever favor, you had been haunted by the Baron. The fucking Baron.
You assume that Zemo getting locked away into the highest security prison on earth was the so-called ‘scale’ tipping in Bucky’s favor. But Zemo works one step ahead, doesn’t he? His saccharine little monologue lingered in your mind constantly, itching at the back of your mind while Bucky wasn’t there to distract you from it. Does he treasure you? Does he feel like home?
It didn’t take long at all for your nightly thoughts to stray from Bucky and towards Zemo. How would Zemo’s hands feel on you? How would they touch you and where? How would they hold you? Would they feel like home? Would he?
And once you’d exhausted thoughts of his hands- and there had been many of them, ones that you’d had even while you had been watching him on his plane, and in Madripoor, and in Riga- you began to think of other parts of him. What would his tongue feel like on yours, what would he taste like? What of his teeth, marking you as his? What if you could wake up to his cock moving inside you?
You had been so deep into your lust for the Baron that when Sam called you to tell you that they’d arranged for Zemo to be let out of prison for another mission, it hardly took any deliberation on your part before you began packing your bags to ‘help.’ In what sense, you hadn’t been entirely sure. Not until now.
Now you stand before him, and he watches you so intently that you feel already naked under his gaze. A very small thought, one that has only lived in the recesses of your mind, starts inching its way forward- that, even though you and Bucky had never agreed to a steady relationship, even though you’d never given yourselves a label, part of you considered yourself his. And the Baron seems to sense this too, just like he seemed to sense a growing discontent within you in Riga.
He leans forward in his seat, somehow parting his legs further, and it takes everything in you not to step closer to him as his rasping voice lowers into a seductive rumble in his chest, like distant thunder. “What is the true meaning for this, draga? Surely you don’t think I would deign to run away- not with these woods all around us.”
Your breath catches in your throat. “No.”
“No?”
“No,” you repeat. “He doesn’t fulfill me.”
When the Baron recedes into the shadows again, he wears a smirk of victory on his face.
You had been prepared for this; Zemo’s little display of I told you so. His chagrin nearly oozes from his being as he reclines on the emerald couch he’s staked a claim to across the room, which he’d thrown himself down upon the minute Sam and Bucky left.
Left you in charge of the Baron. Left you to make sure he didn’t get up to any trouble.
“We trust you,” had been Bucky’s parting words. We. Him and Sam. Not just him and his faith in you. Perhaps he doesn’t have enough of it.
Well, Bucky isn’t bargaining on your questionable morals.
It’s on the tip of your tongue. I’ll do whatever you want. But the look on Zemo’s face is so smug, so all-knowing, that you replace that thought with another, even more forward one. “Take your clothes off.”
Zemo blinks. “Pardon?”
You mirror the tilt of his head almost condescendingly. “You gave me your proposition, Baron. Now I’m giving you mine. Take. Off. Your. Clothes.”
There’s an irritated edge to your words that takes him aback, his mouth opening with a little ‘aha’ that makes your skin crawl with how much you simply want him. His lips twitch at the corners, almost like he’s impressed somewhere beneath the superiority complex.
“I do not share what’s mine,” he says after a moment. “If this is to happen, then you belong to me, and no one else.”
You nod as well as you can with him holding your gaze, feeling a little bit like you’re signing a deal with a demon. “The same applies.”
“That’s where you’re wrong, princeza. I belonged to you the second you stepped through that door.”
He raises himself from the couch, and he strips. Or, at least, he begins to. But somewhere around the third button on his black blouse, you curse under your breath, your hands flexing at your sides as you cross the room in swift, assured steps. He gives you a soft noise of surprise as your hands land on the front of his blouse and rip it open as though it’s made of paper. Buttons fly, skittering across the hardwood floor as you shove him back down onto the couch with a loud, “Oof!”
His eyes are wide for a split second before he tries to hide the fact that you’ve startled him- but you already know the truth. He’s breathless when he says, “In a rush, are we?”
“I’ve wanted you too goddamn long, Baron. I’m not waiting anymore,” you reply fervently as you straddle his lap, your hands deftly unfastening his belt before he even has a chance to groan. Which he does, when his hands find your neck and he distracts you by pulling you in for a searing kiss.
Zemo’s tongue tastes like Tennessee Honey- the only liquor Sam had in this god forsaken cabin- drawing a squeak from you as heat and sweetness invades your senses. You weren’t expecting it, any more than you were expecting the softness of his voice when he says, “You realize I have to walk out of here semi-decent, yes?”
“They’ll find out that I fucked you sooner or later, babe,” you manage out around the moan wedged in the back of your throat as Zemo’s mouth makes contact with your neck, his hands grasping at seemingly any amount of your skin he can find. “Why try to hide it, hmm?”
He doesn’t afford you a proper response, but merely sucks a deep red welt onto your neck. His hands whip your shirt over your head, and the damn thing is more than willing to flutter silently to the floor as he smirks to find your chest bare, your nipples already peaked from the position and the rush of cold air to your skin. His glimmering eyes trace the contours of your breasts just as his warm hands move to grope them. His palms are softer than they have a right to be, his fingertips strong and hinting at a ruthless amount of precision when they pinch your nipples just enough to make you whine.
“Have you any idea how you have tormented me?” His words seem to surround you as he mouths kisses along the soft line of your throat, and his tongue darts out to swirl once within the dip of your collarbone. “How I have wanted to take you for myself?”
“You make it difficult to imagine- oh fuck,” you groan as his hot tongue circles your nipple. Your hands find his head, fingers driving through his hair and against his scalp as he moves to suck the hardened bud into his mouth, and you find yourself having trouble quieting your own moans. Dissolving into his grip, the heat between your legs reaches a fever pitch as you clamp your thighs on either side of his waist to drag him closer. “Please, Helmut- GOD-”
You cut yourself off with a yelp as he sinks his teeth into the curve of your breast, then laves his tongue over the indented mark left in his wake. Your shoes clatter to the floor as your toes curl, your hips driving your core down desperately onto the taut muscle of Zemo’s thigh, his sturdy hands the only thing keeping you from collapsing back onto the coffee table.
“So, my princeza likes pain?” he muses as he moves his mouth to your other breast, and when his tongue flicks once over your erect nipple and his nails scratch teasingly down your sides, a wordless whine escapes you.
You give a shaky breath to steady yourself, your eyes already searching for his. When you find them, they’re much too dark and focused on how you bite your lip. “I like the marks.”
A guttural groan slips from his lips onto your skin, and as his hands slide lower you feel a dizzying rush of arousal sink in your belly. He moves to press a soothing kiss over the mark he’s made, gentler than you’ve come to expect from him. “As do I.”
His hand slides beneath your skirt, palming your plush thighs for just a moment before he dares to move higher, and then stops. His eyes snap to yours, a dangerous glint in them as he glides a single finger over your bare sex.
“You little temptress,” he muses, but there’s a shade of awe in his breathy voice, as if he wasn’t truly sure until this point that you came here with the sole purpose of seducing him.
“Thought you might appreciate the ease of access, Baron,” you say, only a little bit proud that your voice doesn’t waver.
“Ease of access,” he echoes, his eyes flicking from your face to your legs, as if calculating his options in his head. He sucks his bottom lip through his teeth just briefly, just enough for you to know that he’s irritated that he doesn’t have more time. Then his eyes find your face again, and his hands tighten on your waist just before he flips you over to lay across the couch.
The sound you make is somewhere between a gasp and a sigh, watching Zemo sink between your legs, his palm gliding up your calf as he chastely presses his lips to your knee. He mouths kisses just along the inside of your thigh, the sensation of his stubble scratching against your skin electrifying in comparison to his soft lips. It’s only when his tongue juts out and traces a wet line along the jagged trail of a stretch mark just at the widest point of your leg that you nearly stop breathing.
“You deserve someone who will worship every part of you, princeza,” he whispers, tracing along another with his tongue and feeling you shudder against him. “Every inch. Every curve. Every mark.” He sucks hard against them as if to punctuate his words, so suddenly that you inhale sharply through your teeth. “Whether I’ve given them to you or not. Because they make you what you are, and you are divine.”
Your shaking in his grip seems to be inconsequential as he gives the same attention to your other thigh, tracing the little marks on your skin with his tongue before sucking his own on top of them. By the time he wrenches your legs a bit wider and pulls you down the couch toward him, you can practically feel your arousal dripping from your cunt onto the plush upholstery.
He leans ever closer to you. He breathes.
“You smell so sweet, draga.”
You don’t have time to feel the warmth bloom in your cheeks before he’s upon you, seeking you with his open mouth like he wants to devour you whole. A shrill howl breaks from your lungs before you can stop it, your hips canting towards his face as though there’s a single place that he’s neglecting to touch you.
You can barely manage to keep yourself still as your hands shoot forward to tangle into his hair, blissfully unaware of the pitiful noises you make. Zemo moans, his tongue swirling against you like there is nothing in the world that would be giving him more pleasure, his hands gripping at your thighs and spreading them open. After you’ve rutted against him enough, he plants his hands on your hips and pins you down to the couch, holding you steady as he continues his ministrations.
A short whine of frustration cuts through the air, your fingers tugging madly on Zemo’s hair as he closes his lips around your clit, his moan vibrating against your sensitive nerves and shooting a jolt of electricity up your spine.
“Oh for fuck’s sake-” You clamp your hands on either side of his head, roughly pulling him up to capture him in a kiss. He grumbles a protest, fingers digging prints into your thighs as he fumbles, seemingly knocked off-kilter by your change in tune.
And knocked further when you roll sideways and fall off of the couch and onto the floor, your hand connecting with it just before Zemo’s head hits the back of your palm, a noisy grunt expelling from his chest as you land on top of him.
“I wasn’t done yet,” he murmurs petulantly as you lift off of him, sliding forward to straddle his bare chest.
“Who said that you were, Baron?” you quip, undoing the zipper of your skirt in order to pull it over your head, leaving you bare on top of him.
“If I had known you were so willing, I would have- scheiße-”
Zemo gasps loudly as you grind your wet cunt against his naked chest. His hands fly to your hips, trying to pull you further towards his face as you rub yourself on him.
You grab his hands and pin them to the forest green rug on either side of his head, angling yourself forward so that your clit has more contact with his skin. “What would you have done, babe? Would you have fucked me in your kitchen with Bucky in the other room? With his cum still in me?”
He swallows audibly, his jaw working as he grits his teeth. He nods.
Despite the pounding of your pulse in your ears, you tilt your head to the side. “You think you can fuck me like he can?”
His dark eyes reflect the orange flames still flickering in the fireplace, and a low rumble issues from the back of his throat before he supplements, “Better.”
“See, I know you can,” you whisper to him, holding his gaze as you grind yourself against him. “Maybe, if you can get me off with that pretty mouth, I’ll let you show me just how right I am. Think you can do that?”
“How presumptuous of you.” He whispers as you release his wrists, letting him grab at every inch of your skin that he can while his unsteady breaths expose him for how impatient he is. “You think that you aren’t exactly where I want you to be? Don’t insult your own intelligence, Schatz.”
“Hey, Zemo?” you say sweetly as you lift yourself from his chest, sliding your dripping cunt closer to his face.
“Yes?”
“Shut up.”
To his credit, he does, but that’s mostly because his mouth becomes otherwise occupied, his eyes closing as a groan vibrates against your clit. His hands lift to your hips, not to deter you, but to guide you in your assault on him, the glide of your wet skin against his tongue unmistakably perverse and altogether so, so wonderful.
It takes very little for you to come, and you blame him entirely for that. If he wasn’t so fucking good at what he does, if he didn’t intoxicate every part of you, maybe you would last longer to torture him a bit more. But you can’t, not when his hands tighten on your hips and he moans so beautifully into you, his laving tongue testing your own restraint more than it already has been.
You’ve barely just hit the threshold, your cunt pulsing and head tilted back with a restrained whimper, when he flips you over so quickly that his leg loudly bangs into the coffee table and something crashes down on the other side of it.
Shoving himself between your quivering thighs, Zemo continues to suck on your clit relentlessly, one hand coming up to press your back flat down against the floor, and with the other, pushing to fingers deep into your spasming cunt.
“Oh my fucking god,” you curse, your nails digging into his shoulders as he fucks you hard through your orgasm, your toes curling and knee jolting up to slam against the glass table top. “That’s- oh fuck- that’s not fair.”
“You have an interesting idea of what’s fair,” he breathes, curling his fingers so perfectly inside you that you see stars. “You told me to show you how right you are. So I am.”
“I hate you,” you whine, your fingers scratching through his hair as he flicks his tongue teasingly over your clit.
“Do you, now?” His eyes sparkle with mischief, glinting in the warm glow from the fire light. “I wonder what you would let me do to you if you liked me, draga.”
“Keep it up and you won’t have to- oh…” You hiss through your teeth as you feel the warm stirrings of another orgasm mounting on the tips of his fingers.
“Won’t have to, what?” You shudder around his moving fingers, biting down so hard on your lip that you fear you may draw blood as he moves up the length of your body to hover over you. “Oh, I know. I won’t have to wonder what it takes to break you. I already have, haven’t I?”
He withdraws his fingers before you can reach your second peak, leaving you empty and aching for him. A noisy, irritated gasp expels from your lungs as you clench around nothing, fists pounding the floor as he reaches to undo his belt. “You’re doing this on purpose.”
“Of course I am.”
His hand slides down your leg to hook it around his waist before driving his cock so deeply into you that you can feel him in your belly. The moan you make is obscene and loud, bouncing off the sloped ceiling and ringing back into your own ears, but he only responds by pulling back and thrusting even harder into you.
Zemo swears under his breath, the whisper of his own moan spilling onto your parted lips. A sob carries itself out of your throat as he presses a soft kiss to the skin below your ear, and then covers your mouth with his own. Already so close to the tipping point, you whimper as your muscles tighten around him all too soon, trying to hold back.
“You do not have to be good for me.” His voice is strained as he grips your hands to pin them above your head. Your hands flex within his grip as he strikes something white hot and angry within you, shrieking to be given attention. Feeling how you react, how you arch into him and cry out, he repeats the motion in earnest.
“Oh fuck, Zemo-”
“I know.” His voice is so rough, and so quiet, it’s like a purr from the deepest part of his throat. You come hard for him, your hands tightening so hard in his that you’re sure your nails dig crescent moons into his knuckles. He doesn’t seem to care in the slightest, fucking you through your orgasm like he isn’t interested in slowing down any time soon.
But once you come down is when his hips stutter, and his own groan makes a fresh wave of heat crash through your core. His hands are so tight in yours that you can’t break free of his hold, but you can turn your head to let your lips graze his ear as you whisper, “Look at me.”
He lifts his head. The light dances in his eyes, letting you see just how blown his pupils are, allowing for only a thin ring of amber to surround their eerie blackness, like the ring of fire around an eclipse.
You trail one foot delicately up the back of his thigh as you wrap your legs around his waist. You smirk knowingly as you say, “You don’t have to be good for me, Helmut.”
He curses as he hangs his head, and you feel him twitch within you.
“I told you to look at me when you come.”
Zemo’s eyes snap to yours, his mouth open with a shuddering gasp. You hold his gaze as he parks his hips against yours, his face drawn and eyes fluttering with every heaving breath he takes when he fills you. His cheeks are red, and he tries to steady his breathing by closing his mouth, but all he succeeds in doing is giving you a quiet whimper that sounds so weak and defeated, it makes a smile grow on your face.
You hum, taking in the way his eyes fall shut despite your order. “I think the scales have tipped in my favor now, babe. Wouldn’t you agree?”
Zemo nods, letting his head fall heavily to your shoulder at your words. His grip on your hands weakens, allowing you to wriggle them free and pull him to collapse entirely on top of you. You card your fingers through his hair, letting him rest his head in the crook of your neck as he steadies his breathing.
“You’re right,” he murmurs with another weak nod into your shoulder. “You’re right.”