Archive of Our Own

Pomni nearly trips over her own feet as she toes on her shoes and scrambles out into the hallway before taking the stairs to the entrance of the building two at a time.

Brief glimpses of other lives pass as she grasps the railing and lets her momentum carry her forward, chatter about classes and new PVP games and girls who may or may not be showing romantic interest. She makes it through the entryway without running into anyone she's taking classes with and allows herself to let out the breath she's been holding as she pushes one of the heavy glass doors open and steps through. The warm breeze feathers through her hair as she smooths down her shirt and walks briskly toward the parking lot while trying to look like she's in less of a hurry than she is.

It's a perfect Friday night. The fickle warmth of early spring is giving way to fragrant flowers and waxy green leaves and the muted song of crickets and tiny tree frogs in the woods surrounding the campus. People are drinking and facetiming family members back home and she catches a faint whiff of a joint being passed amongst a small cluster of metalheads discussing a new venue that just opened up. It's the kind of night that always made her stomach flutter with anticipation when she was a kid, the kind of night where you felt like you might have a life changing revelation or stumble across something supernatural or be kissed by the aloof, mysterious boy in your friend group. She absently brushes down the pieces of hair that don't want to stay straightened and makes her way toward Gummigoo’s car where he's waiting for her toward the edge of the lot. He's looking at something on his phone when she hurries around the car and opens her door.

As she sits down in the passenger seat, the engine already on and his music already playing, she gets a flicker of that feeling that has been following her for months. The feeling that, despite riding in this car dozens if not hundreds of times, she's just a guest here, someone hitching a ride from a person whose life she isn't part of. She feels out of place, like somebody transplanted her from a completely different world into this one. She can't figure out why, after all of this time, after all the repetition, her nervous system won't just settle and let her feel at home.

Gummigoo pockets his phone and pulls out of his parking space as Pomni grabs at her seatbelt and takes a steadying breath. She watches him out of the corner of her eye as he pulls onto the drive that leads from the dorms out of the campus, silently amazed that he looks so completely alert after a full day of classes. It astounds her how much energy he effortlessly maintains for talking to and being surrounded by people. He pulls onto the main road and her mind inevitably flits to how surreal it is for him to have gone from being that mind-bogglingly easygoing guy in one of her classes to her boyfriend.

She was initially fascinated by his accent and the fact that he had ended up here of all places, a place where he should stick out like a total misfit but somehow doesn't. He was big and broad-shouldered and disarmingly polite. Once she got over her disbelief at him repeatedly seeking her out - making small talk in the courtyard where she’d sit and study, approaching her to say hi at the occasional party she’d go to - she moved on to being completely intimidated. He had such a presence and was so utterly self-assured, and as she would discover a few weeks later, gentle and sweet. Pomni went from being distantly amazed by his ability to socialize with anybody to being with him as he did it. She watched him move from one environment to another, completely comfortable in his own skin, genial with everyone. Sometimes she felt like she was awkwardly standing on the sidelines as she watched people gravitate toward him and conversations reshape around him, but it was hardly his fault.

"You havin' a good day so far?"

Everything was such a flurry of activity that it's the first real thing he has said to her today.

The beginning of the semester has been an absolute nightmare for her - one of her classes got canceled for low attendance and she got shuffled into a different one that she was completely unprepared for and she has the same awful professor for two of her other classes who doesn't know how to teach at all. The shift manager at her part-time job, as well meaning as she is, keeps texting Pomni and asking her to cover on her days off, and despite her making it clear when she got the job that she is a full-time student and can't afford to give up what little time she has to study, she can tell that they're not happy with her. She's also having the beginnings of what might become a full-blown existential crisis at having picked a torturously unfulfilling degree to pursue, which she has attempted to tell him on two separate occasions.

She can't bring all of that up and ruin their night before it has even started, so she instead says, "Not bad."

"Good," he utters, satisfied, and further absolves her of trying to figure out how to say that she's overwhelmed and exhausted without spoiling the mood by beginning to tell her about his two closest friends and what he did when he hung out with them the previous day. She listens, mostly, half-watching the world go by as sunset turns the unfamiliar landscape dusky beneath the burning yellows and lilacs painting the clouds.

She thinks for a moment that she recognizes the housing development he takes them through before realizing that the few street signs she catches are unfamiliar.

“All right,” he says, pulling onto a road lined with bigger, older looking houses that have been decently maintained. A few windows are lit and she sees the flicker of a TV screen as they pass one of the smaller homes. She glances up ahead to see a particular yard packed with cars parked haphazardly, some encroaching on the tidy flower bed by the road, some catastrophically blocked in on all sides. Somebody is standing in the mulch, staring at their phone with a beer bottle tucked under their arm. “Here we are.”

He waits for her as she climbs out of the car, hopping the distance from the seat to the ground and smoothing down her shirt and combing a hand through her hair one last time. Dozens of voices all overlapping one another and the repetitive thumping of some playlist connected to a bluetooth speaker hum through the concrete driveway and vibrate the leaves on a few shrubs that line the front of the house.

The thumping of the bass outside does nothing to prepare her for the volume of the music when he opens the door. Raucous laughter and shouting hit her like a truck and the speakers are so jarringly loud that a small part of her wants to claw its way out and flee. Gummigoo steps inside and she hurries to keep up with him. Her anxiety climbs higher when Matt and Chad yell over the din almost immediately. Her boyfriend throws his arms out, delighted, and hurries over to greet his best friends.

"Pomni?"

Her name startles her so much she actually jumps. When she turns around she has to crane her neck upward to see who it is.

"Jax?"

He stares at her through his big, half-lidded eyes, one hand tucked in his pocket and one wrapped around a plastic cup where he’s leaned against the wall. "Hey."

She has only seen Gummigoo's roommate half a dozen times if that. The first time he brought her back to his dorm, Jax was sprawled on the couch in their modest living room. Gummigoo had mentioned him vaguely, enough for Pomni to know that he existed. She's not sure what she expected but it certainly wasn't the impossibly tall rabbit with huge catlike eyes and a coolly disinterested gaze. She had awkwardly introduced herself and he had stared at her for a second before muttering “Cool. Hi.” and turning back to the TV. She was mortified afterward, having convinced herself that his subsequent standoffishness was because he heard them having sex not twenty minutes later, but Gummigoo had insisted that he was "just an odd fella" who preferred to keep his distance. After her next two painfully awkward, extremely short encounters with him, Pomni’s impression was that he was just kind of a dick.

She'd had one actual semblance of a conversation with him on a Sunday morning after coming out of Gummigoo's room in her underwear and one of his big shirts, her hair a mess and her little bit of mascara smeared. She'd panicked when she realized he was there, flipping through some textbook with YouTube playing on their huge TV, and went into the kitchen to make a pot of coffee in an attempt to stall and figure out how the hell to proceed. As the ancient coffee pot sputtered and burbled and finally filled the cramped space with its fragrant aroma, she decided that she wasn’t doing anything wrong and that she shouldn’t be uncomfortable and that just being civil was the best option.

When she sat down on the ancient leather chair across from him and asked how he was doing, he surprised her by answering. He was subdued and completely at ease like it didn't bother him to be chatting with a freakishly petite half-naked girl who was clearly in his residence for the explicit purpose of sleeping with his roommate. In their five minutes of quiet conversation she realized he was witty and sarcastic. A childlike hope that they might actually get along had begun to blossom in her chest when Gummigoo emerged from his room, said, "there you are, little lady," and kissed her on the top of her head, and Jax had withdrawn, turning back to his book like neither of them were there. After that it was brief glimpses as he went from his room to the bathroom, from the kitchen to his room.

His eyes dart away from hers and she wonders if she has been staring for a couple seconds. While he's watching two women badly sing the lyrics of whatever’s playing on the stereo directly into one another’s faces, she asks, "What are you doing here?"

"Wishing I was anywhere else." She feels herself smiling a little at his reply. He glances down at a spot of what is hopefully alcohol soaking into the carpet.

“Why are you here then?”

Instead of responding, he stares at her like she’s an idiot for asking before looking off at something that is apparently infinitely more interesting. When she decides to just stand there and wait for him to act like a reasonable adult, he scoffs and rolls his eyes.

“Because there’s nothing else to do in this miserable town,” he finally answers. “Why are you here?”

Pomni’s eyes flicker toward the shouting where Gummigoo is and her stomach drops. Somebody has already handed him a solo cup of something and he takes a swig as one of the people who called him over talks animatedly. None of them have noticed that she's still hovering awkwardly by the door, and she gets the sudden and distinct feeling that she must look extremely out of place. It feels like all of her effort to seem happy to be here is quickly crumbling. When she looks back up at Jax, the knowing stare he’s giving her confirms it.

“I’m … here to unwind,” she finally says. One of Gummigoo’s friends lets out a piercing bark of laughter and her shoulders jump before she can stop them.

A smirk tugs at the corner of the rabbit’s mouth. “And how’s that going for you?”

Pomni forces herself to hold his eyes despite the way her face heats up, willing herself to appear unbothered. “Fine, thank you.”

“Cool,” he drawls, “have fun with that.”

Irked, she turns to catch up with her boyfriend where he’s already finishing off his drink. The volume of the conversation is bordering on ear-splitting and everything in her exhausted brain recoils as she makes her legs carry her the rest of the way over. She’s planning to slide in next to him where he stands in the disorganized circle, but the person beside him is gesturing so wildly she can’t without getting backhanded, so she ends up standing back a little, searching the faces there for someone to notice her and usher her in. She reaches out to brush a hand over Gummigoo’s shoulder to get his attention, and he steps forward to hear somebody else at the very moment her fingers graze his body, pulling away just enough that he doesn't notice her touch. She takes her hand back and tries to look comfortable in her own skin as she feels the positive attitude she worked so hard to build up beforehand rapidly deteriorating.

When she remembers Jax, mortification tears through her, prickling and hot. She looks over her shoulder, dreading the sneer she expects to see on his face. He's gone.

Pomni swallows, glaring at the space where he just was. Whatever.

“Hey,” she tries, the aggravation at his quiet disdain pushing her to elevate her voice. When Gummigoo doesn't hear her, she steps closer and touches his arm. “Hey.”

He starts then, turning around and looking down at her with something like surprise on his features. “There you are!”

“Here I am,” she agrees lamely, hoping it will come off as funny. There are a few weak chuckles around the group, a few men who sound like they're trying to be kind so she doesn't feel bad about her comment falling terribly flat. His hand comes down to rest on her shoulder and she waits for a second for something - for somebody to fill her in on the conversation up to this point, for the mental energy to introduce herself in a way that won't betray how tired and frustrated she is. When neither of these things happen, she reaches up to touch the smooth surface of Gummigoo’s hand where it hovers on the back of her arm like he's not quite sure what to do with it. “I'm going to go find a drink.”

He nods at her, his eyes gentle and his voice warm. “All right, love.” She gives the rest of the group an awkward little wave before slipping away, and the vague, creeping anxiety weighing on her chest recedes into a low level of irritation as she navigates around people who smell like vodka and cheap body spray and weed in her quest to find a cooler or a mini fridge or even a kitchen.

The first hallway she goes down is surprisingly undamaged by all of the people of varying levels of intoxication. She peers into a small half bath that contains at least three dishes full of oddly-shaped decorative soaps. She finds a tidy office full of large potted ferns with a bookcase full of encyclopedias on the far wall. There's a small, uncomfortable looking loveseat across from the desk. She briefly considers shutting herself in there and trying to tune out the blaring music and all of the shouting long enough to take a nap. After another minute of wandering around and muttering she finally comes across a beaten up coffee table absolutely covered in canned alcoholic drinks. It's in a weird foyer-hallway thing and she can't find a light switch anywhere, so she mutters to herself under her breath as she picks up can after can, trying to differentiate between seltzers, canned margaritas, and standard beer. They're not very cold. By this point she absolutely does not care.

When she cracks open a can and takes a sip only to discover that it's some super-carbonated artificially grape flavored monstrosity, she swallows her mouthful with a grimace. “Shit,” she almost shouts to the empty room. It tastes comically bad, almost exactly like the weird flavored foam they would cover her teeth with at the dentist as a child. She's so frustrated that she drinks the whole thing on principle. It's the most agonizing minute of her life, and she's battling her gag reflex as she fumbles for a can of literally anything else. Her eyes are watering when she takes a sip of what is thankfully cheap beer, and she has to drink half of it before the horrid taste is washed out of her mouth.

Pomni collects a third drink before starting to walk again, hoping it will be as easy to backtrack to the entry room as it was to get to the mysterious alcohol-coffee-table-foyer in the first place. She is still telling herself pretty convincingly that she's on the right track when she passes a room where two people are in the midst of a heated argument about a third-party who is not present. A room that was absolutely not there before, which leads her to believe that she is not, in fact, heading back in the same direction. By the time she finds the kitchen, her third can is empty.

If she wasn't so mentally and physically exhausted, she thinks she might spend the next hour approaching random people who don't look like psychopaths to try to make friends. Other people seem to do it effortlessly at these things. Maybe then she would at least see a familiar face from time to time at social gatherings, somebody she could call out to and approach with the same enthusiasm Gummigoo has for his friends. Somebody she could sit and catch up with so she doesn't look like an awkward, standoffish weirdo trying to imitate a lamp or a house plant.

She sidles past two boys who appear to be making some sort of hellish concoction out of several different fruit juices and gin out of a giant plastic bottle to get to the fridge. There's a surprisingly balanced array of food inside when she opens the door, and she feels a stab of pity for whoever it is that bought all of the Greek yogurt and meal-prepped a bunch of salads with chicken and orange slices on them. She gets the distinct impression that they are completely unaware of what's being done to their house.

She finds what looks like a silo of beer - a 24-ounce can that was almost definitely purchased to be enjoyed while watching a football game after a long week of work - and grabs it. The boys at the island in the center of the room are giggling over their hideous science experiment of a cocktail when she squeezes past them again to try to hunt for her boyfriend.

He's not in the dining room she wanders into, but a group of mannequins appear to be playing a chaotic game of pictionary with napkins and permanent markers. She spares a moment to observe them as they shout guesses about what turns out to be a terribly drawn balloon animal before moving on.

There's a small sunroom to the left and she finds a bunch more potted plants there. Somebody is perched on the arm of an old sofa, playing music through their phone as they scroll mindlessly on it. There's no trace of Gummigoo.

Finally she comes upon the big room that they first walked into. Things have gotten even rowdier since she was last there and maneuvering around people who are clogging up the open spaces is an infuriatingly sluggish effort. She keeps thinking she'll see the bright yellow and green or hear his scratchy, jovial voice. When she makes her way around the entire perimeter of the room with no luck she does it again. She refuses to acknowledge the kernel of unease in the pit of her stomach.

He has to be somewhere, she reasons. He probably went to look for her. The huge beer she's nursing helps soothe her anxiety at group after group of strange faces and stumbling bodies as she gathers what little nerve she has left to start methodically searching the house.

The vague unease begins to morph into dread as she picks her way through the clusters of people, surveying each room as much as she can when she's a foot shorter than most everyone else.

She tries not to think about the first party he ever took her to, the one in a neighboring town where she knew absolutely nobody and he reassured her that he would look out for her and introduce her to people only to end up talking to a group of old friends he ran into for the entire night, not introducing her, not noticing when she got tired of standing behind him and sat down in the corner by herself for an hour. "I'm so sorry, love," he'd murmured after finally collecting her and walking out to the car, only noticing the tears streaming silently down her face when they got in and the light hit them. "Those are some of my best mates and we haven't seen each other in ten years. I had no idea they lived here. I got completely caught up in talking about everything that's happened since then. I'm so sorry." They had gotten back to his dorm, and by the time he'd apologized to her with sex and fallen asleep, she felt childish and self-centered for being so upset that he spent the night catching up with childhood friends.

After another three minutes of not seeing a single flash of bright yellow or hearing any hint of a wildly out of place accent, it dawns on her that a repeat of that awful night is likely the best case scenario.

She pitches her huge empty can and grabs a lukewarm bottle off of the kitchen counter the next time she walks through it, finding that it's a screw top and circling back to throw the cap away too, and she drinks half of it in a minute, her stomach churning with worry and hurt. Maybe she should just go out to the car and wait for him, she thinks, then laughs bitterly to herself at resorting to the tactics of a child separated from their parent at the mall. She's so distraught that she almost walks right by Matt and Chad without noticing them. Her head whips around at the bright colors of their bodies in a dark corner of the living room, and as she hurries over to them, she realizes her heart is in her throat.

"Hey," she says, raising her voice when they don't hear her the first time. "Hey."

"Oh!" Matt blinks up at her. "Hello, miss."

She can't tell if he's being polite or trying to be funny or if he actually doesn't know her name. "Hey," she stutters out again. "Um, have you guys seen Gummigoo?" Pomni is mortified when the hot sting of tears rushes to her eyes and she fights them back resolutely. "I … haven't seen him in a while, and I was wondering if you guys knew where he went."

"No, we don't," Chad responds, then blinks. "Wait. Yes, we do."

"Okay." She looks at them expectantly for a second and they look back. "Uh, where is he?"

"Oh, he's not here," Matt utters matter-of-factly. "I think he had a few too many. He was three sheets to the wind last I saw him." Pomni stares at him dumbly.

"Yeah," Chad agrees. "He was a mess. Some other bloke was taking him home."

"I - oh." She is so stunned that the sickening wave of emotion welling up evaporates completely. "Oh. Okay. Thanks."

"Happy to be of service, miss." Matt gives her a polite nod. She mumbles something before walking away, clutching her beer in both hands and running her fingertips over the peeling label on it to ground herself.

Somehow she finds her way to the deck behind the house. The cool night air feathers through her hair as she squeezes through the stubborn sliding door and perches on a sun bleached chair, setting about the task of processing the information she was just given.

There's anxiety, unease at being in a strange place where she barely recognizes any faces and doesn't know how to get back home, the cold reality of being a petite woman completely out of her depth and disoriented from the alcohol and the hours of sensory overload. There's a kind of despair specific to being catastrophically let down by a man who insisted that there was nothing to worry about, a feeling of being hurt and lost and humiliated. There's a tiny bit of childlike fear at having been left behind by the bigger, stronger person who she was supposed to be able to rely on. There's frustration with herself for not volunteering to be the designated driver when he was the one who wanted to come, frustration that he dragged her to this when she must have been visibly exhausted, frustration that she didn't speak up and say she'd rather just hang out at her place and get some rest. And then there's another type of frustration, one in a grim, parental voice that lectures her for having believed for even a second that he wasn't going to get blasted when he was so excited for this stupid party and was so eager to go to it. She feels the looming exhaustion as it finds its opening and begins to seep through the cracks, and she can feel that it's coming on so strong that she's rapidly missing her window to even be able to formulate an explanation to somebody as to why she needs some total stranger to give her a ride home. The chair creaks as she gets up from it and moves to lean on the railing overlooking the backyard, a desperate attempt to buy herself some time through moving around before her energy is completely depleted.

After cycling through these things a few times - the panic, the anger, the hurt, the cold little fragment of fear that refuses to be reasoned away - she settles on numbness.

There's going to be a confrontation, a conversation. She'll try to bring up that he dragged his girlfriend to a house party, volunteered to be the designated driver, then got shitfaced and abandoned her, drunk and exhausted, with a bunch of other drunk people and no way to get home. He didn't just hurt her, he put her in an unsafe situation.

She knows exactly what he'll say, too: he's really sorry, he didn't mean to do it, and he'll speak to her in that gentle, smooth voice instead of escalating to full-on shouting like her friends' boyfriends would. He'll ask her with genuine hurt on his face why she didn't tell him that she was too tired to go, and when she tries to touch on him leaving a tiny woman in unsafe environment, he'll stare at her blankly, almost like she's insulting herself by implying that she might need protected. He's going to bring up that being that drunk made him vulnerable too, but he'll do it in these quiet half-sentences like he doesn't want to turn the talk into an argument by pointing it out. And somehow, ludicrously, to some degree it will work. She'll feel like they were both responsible and that she's being unreasonable by picking a fight over an honest mistake.

Before she can stop herself, she's pulling out her phone and glancing briefly at it. Not a single notification.

She's so fucking tired.

"How’s the unwinding going?"

Pomni glances over her shoulder, the breeze ruffling the long strands of hair that frame her face. Jax must have come out while she was lost in thought. “Great,” she says flatly.

“Oh.” He starts toward her, and she turns back to the yard, leaning more heavily on the railing. “That’s great, because you didn’t look more … unwound.”

A sigh escapes her and she turns to face him. He’s got a half-empty drink in one hand. She finishes her beer instead of dignifying the jab with a response.

“So.” He stops in front of her, so tall it’s ridiculous. “Where’s your boyfriend?”

“He’s not here,” she answers honestly, an edge of anger getting through. She looks down at the empty bottle in her hand for something to do, and his gaze falls to it as she rotates it, looking absently at the ornate designs around the logo. “As in, not here at all.” His eyes flicker back up, gleaming like gemstones in the moonlight. "Gummigoo got shitfaced and somebody drove him home apparently."

There's surprise on his features when she looks up to gauge his reaction.

"He was the designated driver," she goes on. "So now I'm here. Stranded."

“Well that’s not good,” he murmurs, and she snorts. He tilts his head a little, that guardedness coming off of him in waves. “...you need a ride home?”

Pomni stands there in the cool night air. The moonlight turns from clear to gauzy as a cloud passes over it.

“Yeah,” she eventually responds. “I do.”

Jax looks at her, his pupils wide in the dark, flicking over her features like he’s trying to decipher something. “I take it you’re not planning on staying a whole lot longer,” he drawls.

“Not at all,” she confirms. When he finally smirks a little, she knows his mouth is changing shape but it mostly shows in his eyes. “Are youuu…” She gestures at him vaguely with the bottle she’s holding. “...good to drive?”

“Eh.” He shrugs cavalierly. “Better than you.” When Pomni only looks at him, unimpressed, he rolls his eyes. “I’m buzzed. I’ll be fine.”

There’s a crash in the house behind them, and Pomni flinches as one of his ears twitches toward the sound. The shouting that ensues is largely incoherent but it rapidly becomes apparent that it’s not friendly.

“Yeah, uh.” There’s another, smaller crash, and something makes Pomni think that something valuable was just chucked at somebody’s head before shattering against the wall. “We can probably go.”

“Okay,” she agrees, and he scans the back yard for a way to get around to the driveway without wading through what sounds like the kind of brawl that gets the cops called out. There’s a small gate in the fencing and a little path of stones that wraps around the side of the house, and when she reaches his side, he leads her that way, leaving his drink balanced on the railing of the deck. Pomni follows his lead, placing her bottle on a peeling spot of deck stain. There’s another cataclysmic crash that actually shakes the house as they’re walking down the stairs, and she watches as Jax’s eyes go wide and his pupils shrink with alarm. “We can hurry if you want,” she tells him, amused by his reaction, feeling a bizarre little twinge of excitement at the necessity of fleeting before things get any more out of control. He leads the way, and when he manages to finesse the rusty lock open to break them out, he swings the gate open and holds it for her in a way that feels completely nonchalant.

“Why do I feel like several thousand dollars of antiques were just destroyed?”

Pomni snorts again at the contemplative lilt in his voice. “Somebody’s grandma is probably all over the floor now,” she says, and she hears the soft huff of laughter behind her.

Jax’s car is a black Civic tucked at the edge of the yard now decimated by tire tracks. She trots out ahead of him and climbs into the passenger seat, satisfaction filling her at not scrambling into a vehicle that’s already on with the music and the AC blasting like the driver has been waiting impatiently and is about to leave without her. She also wants to see how he’ll fit his body into a normal-sized car when he’s so tall. He does it with surprising ease, his seat pushed back all the way to accommodate his long legs. He has three keys on the ring he pulls out of his pocket and she idly wonders what the third one is, the one that’s not to his car or the dorm.

When he starts the ignition, the air is on low and she’s shocked to hear an album playing she’s been listening to for the last month on repeat. She can’t remember the last time she rode in somebody’s car where the music wasn’t blasting so loud she had to struggle to make conversation over it.

He reverses smoothly onto the street, handling the car like it’s an extension of him. She buckles herself in and looks back at the house as they pull away from it.

“So.” She looks over at him when he speaks, noticing the watch on his slender wrist, black like the shirt he’s got on. “You uh, need anything?”

It takes her a moment to realize he probably means food or drinks or ibuprofen. “No, I’m fine,” she tells him. “Beer has plenty of calories.” A small grin appears on his face and she feels herself biting her lip. She can’t remember the last time somebody actually found anything she said funny. “But thank you.”

“’Course,” he replies simply. She tries to pay attention to where they’re going so she knows where the hell Gummigoo dragged her, but his presence keeps drawing her gaze.

“Tell me, Jax.” She situates herself in her seat, the alcohol stringing the words together for her. “Does Gummigoo usually get blackout drunk and ditch his girlfriends at random people’s houses?”

“I…” She watches his eyes dart as he thinks. “...don’t really know.” They pull onto a better-lit road where the houses are newer and stacked closer together. His car smells faintly like leather and musk, but also like something a little warmer. “Has he done this before?”

Pomni watches the neighborhood go by. There are balloons tied to one of the mailboxes, red and blue. “He usually just lets me stand in the corner while he entertains people who think his accent is exotic.” She feels Jax glancing at her. “That’s not fair of me,” she sighs.

He surprises her by letting out a chuckle.

“What?” She looks over at him, wary.

“So you’re telling me the guy who seems like a self-centered oblivious jackass is a self-centered oblivious jackass? Who would’ve guessed?”

“He’s not,” Pomni finds herself protesting. “He’s - he’s sweet and friendly and he takes care of me.”

His grin grows more as he watches the road. “By dragging a pint-sized girl to shitty parties in the middle of nowhere and abandoning her around a bunch of strangers who are completely out of control, right.”

“He-” Pomni hesitates, floundering, outraged at his words and burning with shame that she gave him the ammunition. “-he means well. He’s nice to everybody.”

“Except you,” Jax cheerfully interjects.

“He sought me out,” she protests. “He reached out to me.”

“Oh, what a saint. Pursuing a girl he wanted to screw.” She stares at him, open-mouthed, and he chuckles again. “You see him having sex with you as charity?”

“Wh - no!”

Her face is burning, her thoughts a tangled mess.

“I - was just venting,” she mumbles, looking out the window and sagging back against the seat. “I didn’t mean what I said.”

“Riiight. You were just venting about him being a self-obsessed idiot.”

“He’s not - that’s not fair!”

“Pomni.”

Her name startles her enough that she looks over at him again. The streetlights are doing something fascinating on his huge eyes, flashing across his pupils mesmerizingly. He looks aggravated.

“What did you say that wasn’t true?”

She tears her eyes from his face.

“Does he leave you alone?”

“Yeah,” she hears herself answering. She is both relieved that the alcohol is dulling the edges of her thoughts and upset at it betraying her as she starts talking more. “He … doesn’t introduce me to people.” She hesitates for a second before continuing. “One time I stood there for ages while he talked to a bunch of old friends. He actually moved in front of me at one point so I couldn’t even see anything. It’s like he forgot I was even there.” She looks down at her nails, at the dark blue polish she’d thought was so pretty when she put it on earlier. “I got tired of standing there and sat in the corner for like an hour,” she murmurs, a dry little laugh escaping her. “I was so mad.”

“Sooo … he does leave you alone to entertain people,” he offers, testing.

“Yes,” she utters softly.

“What that you said wasn’t fair then?” Pomni begins to pick at her nails. She has no response. “How long have you been dating him again?”

“Three months,” she grudgingly responds.

He makes a thoughtful sound. “Made it three whole months before starting to drink way too much and stranding you in strange places, huh? I guess that’s not so bad.”

“I could be at home,” she finally says sulkily. “I could’ve been at home for the last four hours. I could’ve been reading or doing laundry or working on assignments. Or listening to the same part of a podcast over and over because I keep zoning out at the same point and having to jump back two minutes or watching my fish swim around their tank or looking everywhere for my vibrator charger.” Jax barks out a laugh at that, caught completely off-guard. “I could’ve been sleeping!”

“Anything but this, huh?”

A small smile plays on her lips and she stares at the dashboard. “This isn’t so bad.” She looks up at him and he looks away toward the road.

Finally, he breaks the short silence that is uncomfortably almost comfortable. “Sooo … your ideal Friday night isn’t standin’ around in a house full of screaming, drunk strangers?”

“Nope.”

“Does he drag you to stuff like this a lot?”

“Not … all the time,” she replies a little sullenly.

Jax snickers. “Are you always as good at acting like you’re havin’ a good time as you were tonight?” She shoots him a brief glare before looking out the window again. The next time he speaks, it’s laced with something incredulous. “Does he care about how miserable this stuff makes you?”

“I-” She cuts herself off, her heart rate picking up. She swallows. “-I don’t think he realizes.” The sharp laugh she gets in response makes her flinch.

“You’ve been dating for three months and he can’t tell that being dragged to terrible parties makes you want to kill yourself?” She sighs and watches the trees and the houses pass. “It sounds like he really doesn’t care.”

“He’s…” She feels something sinking inside of her as she reaches for anything, for any justification, and as she says aloud one of the things she’s told herself a million times she realizes how pitiful it sounds. “...he has a really full social life. He’s busy, he - it’s not fair of me to want him to give that up.”

The silence from Jax is almost worse than his snide commentary. His words when he finally speaks make her stomach drop.

“So not only do you have to compete with his constant need for attention - you won’t even try because you know you’ll lose.”

She has no response.

Neither of them say anything for a long moment. They pass a restaurant with lights strung in its windows and a small park where the moonlight glints off of the benches and a weathered historical sign. He takes them down an alley that avoids the mess of traffic lights up ahead, and where they come out on the other side, the buildings and the streetlights are more sparse.

“Well,” he murmurs, and Pomni is surprised at how calm she feels when she has just been dragged from the fragile state of denial she’s been patching together for weeks straight down into the pits of reality. “If I were him, I wouldn’t be struggling to find time to focus on you. I’d think it would be pretty easy, actually.”

Pomni swallows.

He goes on with a short laugh: “At the very least I’d be showin’ ya off.” Her eyes widen at this. “I could be making everybody else jealous! You wouldn't be dumped in some corner to sit around all by yourself, that’s for sure.” He’s staring out the windshield. The signature grin is there, but there's something sharper in it, a fleeting glimmer in his eyes. “Everyone would know you were mine.”

The knots in her stomach aren't so cold anymore.

“Not that I’d be draggin’ you out that much,” he murmurs after lapsing into thought for a few silent seconds. “I feel like I’d be getting plenty of validation without leaving the house to beg strangers for it.”

Pomni realizes she's starting at the dashboard, at the backlit numbers. His words, so jarringly like the things she has longed for on sleepless nights over the past three months, feel surprisingly little like fingers pressing into a bruise.

She's not picturing Gummigoo’s arm wrapping around her and tugging her against his side while he talks to people. It's not Gummigoo’s eyes fixed on her as she chatters happily about her day. It's not Gummigoo who locks the door in her mind, shutting out the world to lose himself in her until the moonlight gets thin and dew settles on the screens in the windows.

She doesn't feel that nightmarishly familiar twist of loneliness and hurt in her chest.

She feels the flutter of anticipation, the emptiness of possibility.

It's another long moment before his muted voice breaks the quiet. “Plus I’ve got a bunch of random charging cords.”

Pomni hears a genuine laugh escape her.

Not that you'd need your vibrator charged, a voice whispers in her head.

Her eyes are drawn back to him as the impact of that unbidden thought rolls through her mind. She observes his profile, the way his short fur gathers in tufts along his jawline and how it sticks out the littlest bit above the collar of his shirt. She notes the way the fabric clings to his shoulders, his chest, his stomach. He's toned and lithe and up this close she can see the way the strength is coiled quietly beneath his skin. Her gaze is drawn down the arm he's using to steer, his wrist draped lazily over the wheel. His fingers are long and graceful and his hands are big.

His gaze is easy yet sharp, detached and intelligent.

He looks like he can keep a secret.

“It would be nice to not have to fight for a scrap of attention,” she murmurs, working to remember what they were talking about.

“Yeah,” he agrees after a moment, and Pomni looks through the windshield to see the sidewalks and the landscaping fade as they turn onto the route that connects the different parts of the city. She thinks they’re headed for the long stretch that crosses the huge piece of undeveloped land between the suburbs and the part of town where the college is, the part where it’s so dark at night it’s kind of eerie. His eyes shift to her for a long moment, their weight tangible. “That’s … exhausting.”

“How would you know?” She looks at him, tilting her head a little. He's watching the road again. “You’ve probably got women fighting over you. Men and women. People.”

One of his eyebrows goes up and his gaze flicks to her for a moment. “Why would you say that?”

“You know.” She shrugs one shoulder, and when he genuinely doesn’t seem to, she clarifies. “Because you’re ridiculously hot.”

“I.” He blinks, his pupils shrinking to pinpricks. He actually looks stunned.

The warmth from the alcohol tingling in her face and in her chest grows at his reaction. “Oh, come on. I’m just stating a fact.”

“I’m.” He looks back at the road. The hand on the wheel tightens, the tendons straining against his skin. “I, uh.”

“You-” Pomni stares at him in disbelief. He’s actually kind of flustered. “-you have to know that you’re stupidly hot.”

“Look.” He sighs tensely, and his tone is more one of disbelief than alarm. “I wasn’t expecting that from you, that’s all.”

“Why not?” He keeps his eyes on the road as she speaks. “Do you think I’m nearsighted?”

Another shocked laugh escapes him. “No. It’s not that.” He visibly relaxes a little more, and without looking away from his face, she notes the way the tension ebbs in his legs and his stomach. “Pomni, I’ve tied off more condoms than a clown at a birthday party.” She snorts at this. “I know I’m hot.” When he glances back over to find her eyes still fixed on him, not offended or disgusted but amused and still seemingly intrigued, his eyes dart away again. “The impact changes based on who the compliment is from, is all.”

His eyes shift over to her again to linger and they’re warm. The fluttering heat inside of her flares a little brighter and suddenly her mouth is dry. She doesn’t know what face she’s making, but from the way his pupils darken, there must be open want there.

Her lips part and she thinks for a moment. “It might not be a compliment,” she finally murmurs. “I could just be bringing it up because it’s true.”

“Oh yeah?”

There’s a ghost of something in his voice, something that feels like him wanting to hear more.

“Nah,” she hears herself saying, “it was definitely a compliment.”

Pomni can see the change that's happening in him, the way the yellow of his eyes is swallowed up as they slowly dilate, the way his body goes from draped lazily on the seat to coiled there, the holding of himself in the same position deliberate. The heat drifting through her veins grows thicker and pools low in her stomach. She thinks she's leaning closer to him, wanting to see the rise and fall of his chest better, wanting the space between them to be less.

“Jeez, Pomni,” he says with a half-laugh that sounds forced, his eyes flickering to her for a split second. “Do you flirt with your boyfriend when he's trying to drive too?”

“Not really,” she murmurs. His fur looks soft. She wonders if it's thicker on his chest.

“Is this the reward I get for my chivalry? You distracting me while I'm trying to get you home safe?”

Now there's an idea.

Pomni breathes in and holds it for a moment, her heart pounding, and lets it out slowly. “I think you can handle a little distraction.”

Jax looks over at her again and says nothing. His pupils flare wider for a hypnotic second when they meet hers and her stomach twists with need.

She’s trying to think through the molten heat that’s clouding her head and making her aware of how pitifully empty she is and how badly she needs to do something about it. Her eyes trail slowly over his body. He’s breathing faster (the way that makes the tight fabric stretch over his chest is obscene) and his pants look uncomfortably snug over the obvious bulge there. Her mouth goes from dry to watering staggeringly fast.

She’s still staring at it when she murmurs, “You’re not seeing anyone, are you?”

It takes him a moment to respond. “Would it stop us if I was?”

Her breath hitches in her throat.

They're out of town now, heading into the winding stretch of road that is sometimes flanked by thick, looming trees and sometimes by endless, overgrown fields of grass. The only light is that of the moon, silvery and scant, nearly blotted out by thick clouds. It's immensely dark.

Pomni jumps when a hand settles on her arm.

It's firm and gentle and unmoving - a tether between them, bridging the tension that has become almost suffocating. The faintest grazing of claws at the ends of his long fingers makes goosebumps break out all over her. His hand is huge beside her small frame.

When her skin heats beneath his touch and she inhales, loud and trembling in the quiet, it skirts down her body to resettle on her thigh. His fingertips slide inward and his claws scratch ever so slightly as he drags it up until he’s all but touching where she’s radiating heat and aching for him.

When she unbuckles her seatbelt he removes it, and when she turns in her seat to reach for the button on his jeans his fingers feather over the strip of skin where her shirt has ridden up before settling into the small of her back. When she tugs them open he’s quick to shift his hips to help her shove them out of the way. 

She has heard of guys with sheaths before but she never knew if she’d actually see one. Pomni runs her fingertips over the soft, short fur of his thigh and traces the graceful line where it carves into his hip before taking hold of him. He’s warm and heavy and hot in her palm, and when she strokes him once, gently, enraptured, he lets out a pleased noise under his breath. Her hand looks tiny. Her thumb and her fingers don't touch.

It's so hot she's stupefied.

She strokes him again, the movement longer and more confident, and the next noise he makes sounds a lot less like it's under his control. She watches, enraptured, as he slips out a little, superheated and aching. It looks incredibly sensitive. It looks like it would feel amazing against her tongue. Pomni isn't breathing.

It's weirdly captivating to watch as she coaxes him out, the smooth glide of him as he gets more erect. The shape of him, how he thickens past the tapered tip, is tantalizing in a way she can’t wrap her head around in the drunken haze of blinding want. It’s alien in the way that his ears are, the ears that twitch as he lets out a sharp exhale above her, alien like the impossibly soft fur that gathers in tufts at the base of them and along his jawline. Alien like the narrow, slightly curved nails that card gently into her hair as his big hand settles on the back of her head, firm and encouraging. She’s so taken with him she hardly notices that she’s dripping wet.

She runs her tongue along the side of it in short flicks, the taste of him intoxicating, the silky softness making her insides squeeze sweetly at the thought of what that might feel like sliding into her body. He groans, a soft, gorgeous sound as he slides out more, dauntingly, intoxicatingly thick. Pomni can’t help the greedy little noise that bubbles up her throat as she mouths at it and strokes as slowly as she can manage, trying desperately to give it the attention it deserves. His words flit through her head - how much experience he has, that he knows how hot he is - and she wants to do the best that she can for him; she wants the memory of how this feels to haunt him when he’s lying awake at night. She shifts her weight so she can slide her other hand under his leg, and she cups his balls in her palm. He jolts a little in his seat, letting out a sharp, low sound like it’s taking a lot to keep himself collected. They’re heavy and big enough that she can barely curl her fingers around both of them to knead them carefully, and she discovers that that’s so hot it makes her feel almost faint.

Jax’s hand tightens in her hair the littlest bit before letting up like the spasm was involuntary. It fuels her desire, and she runs her tongue along the edge of his sheath to coax him out more. The way he inhales tells her it was a good idea. She does it again, slipping the tip of her tongue just inside, and the hand on her head gets heavier.

“I’ve-” Jax hesitates, and Pomni thinks it’s to savor the feeling of her rolling his balls gingerly in her hand as she kisses slowly along his length. “I’ve pictured this - a thousand times, Pomni.”

She moans before she can consciously even process his words.

When?

When they first met that day when he was sprawled on the couch and acted like she was barely worth acknowledging? When she was shut in Gummigoo’s room with him and Jax knew they were fucking?

Did he imagine her like this after that morning when she came out in an oversized t-shirt and silky panties and nothing else and they sat and actually talked for a couple minutes?

The thought of him listening for the sounds she tried to muffle when she was being rocked into one door away, imagining himself doing so much better, the thought of him jerking himself off while she was in their dorm, imagining her on her knees, her head bobbing in his lap-

She’s so wet now she can feel it soaking through her leggings.

Her saliva is dripping down his dick now, her attention getting less calculated as she’s blinded by need. Her hand flutters down his length and she discovers that he’s still getting bigger as she works him out more, almost completely now, she thinks. She holds his dick steady, relaxes her jaw, and takes him into her mouth, stroking her tongue over the softness of his flesh. The groan he lets out above her gives her goosebumps, and as she lowers her head, easing him in, his hand tightens in her hair and he gives a small shudder. She can feel him fully unsheathing in that moment in response to her sinking down on him, an easy flexing of muscle and ligament. A desperate sound bubbles up her throat and she bobs her head, sinking down a little more, laving her tongue greedily over him.

It takes a lot to pull herself back, but after a few long moments she does, breathing in deeply as her spit drips down his shaft. Pomni wills her thundering heartbeat to regulate as she strokes him with the hand not massaging his balls. He doesn’t push her back down, like he’s savoring the slow build, but he doesn’t ease up either. He holds her firmly there, right where she wants to be.

Her eyes fall to the base of his dick and she lets out a breathless little sound. There’s a bulge there, a knot, even thicker than the rest of him. It’s more than intimidating. The thought of getting it inside her makes her vision go spotty for a few seconds.

When she sinks back down on him, it’s hungry and it’s messier, her need to feel the weight of him against her tongue and the roof of her mouth driving her. She only draws back a little, the suction of her mouth and the slide of her tongue thorough and greedy, before steadying herself and going deeper. She’s so turned on that the glide of him against her soft palate only makes her insides clench more insistently. Jax’s soft groan above her almost sounds impressed, and the next time she goes down, a mindless sound thrums through her at the feeling of him hitting the back of her throat. A wave of heat rolls through her, so immense it leaves her reeling, at the way the mass of him muffles it and makes it catch there, an obscene, filthy sound that has Jax gasping out harshly as his hips give a little jerk. She pulls back, breathes deep, and her throat aches as she swallows around him, sinking down until her lips brush his knot.

“Oh God,” he breathes unsteadily, and a feeling of ego she has never experienced before flares white-hot inside her as tears fill her eyes. She centers herself and waits until the gag that seizes her tight around him subsides before slowly pulling off.

She feels more drunk now, somehow, like the taste of him and the heat of his body are amplifying the blurry warmth that’s easing the tension in her muscles and smoothing out the edges of her anxiety. She keeps both of her hands moving, massaging and stroking, his cock glistening with the spit that’s also shining on her lips. “You’re bigger than Gummigoo,” she murmurs, a passing thought that took it upon itself to make itself heard. Jax twitches in her hand and she watches, entranced, as more precum drools from his slit.

“Am I really?” Even with need drawing his voice thin, that contemplative, conversational lilt is there. God he’s so hot.

“Yeah,” Pomni answers mindlessly, slowly jerking him off.

“Bet I know how to use it better than him too,” he rasps, his fingers heavy where they’re wrapped around her skull.

She’s kind of distracted thinking about how she’d like to practice on him, to get her mouth and her throat used to the feeling of him sliding in to the hilt. His words make her heart slam hard against her ribs. “Oh?”

“Mhm.” His claws scratch over her scalp and it causes a full-body shudder to tear through her. “How do you like it? Slow and gentle? You like it a little mean?”

A reedy little moan escapes her and her eyes flutter closed.

“Ah.” She runs her tongue over him again greedily, lapping up the precum dripping sluggishly down his length. “You like it rougher?”

She doesn’t want to take her mouth off of him. Instead of using words, she meets his gaze through her lashes, giving him a guilty look through dilated pupils.

“I can do that for you, Pomni,” he tells her lowly as he watches her smear her spit along his dick with her lips and her fingers. He looks back up at the road and her eyes fall shut again as she kisses sloppily along his length. “Bet I can do it better than him.”

I know you can. She can feel it in the strength in his hands, in the gravelly hum of his voice.

She feels the tension coiling in his restrained posture as she wraps her lips around him again and slides down halfway. She lets herself luxuriate in it, in how good he tastes, how thick he is, before slowly pulling back off. Her insides pulse with want. “You think so?”

As she’s swallowing him back down, she feels him tilt his head a little, his gaze dropping from the windshield to roam over her body. “Wanna find out?”

It isn’t until she moves to pull off of him again that she feels the force let up from the back of her head. She’s getting air because he wants her to. She has never been so turned on in her life.

“Please.”

The way he maneuvers the car when he pulls off the side of the road is the most urgent thing he has done all night.

He barely gets it in park before he’s pulling her up and finding her spit-slicked lips with his. Before she can process what's happening he’s smoothly sliding his tongue into her mouth and sucking the breath from her lungs. Pomni whines and tries to find purchase, her fingers scrambling over his firm chest. He wraps one big hand around her hip and cradles her head in his hand as he coaxes her to shuffle closer. She melts against him instantly.

He kisses her deep and hungry, controlled but demanding, running his tongue over the backs of her teeth and biting at her upper lip like she's already his. The fingertips digging possessively into her hip roam to the small of her back to draw her closer until her chest is flush with his body. Jax pulls back then, an inch, and when she follows, her breath shuddering out of her, he bites gently at her lips. He murmurs into her mouth. “Is this better?”

“Yes,” she gasps. He allows her one more slow, searing kiss before nipping at her jaw and the vulnerable skin beneath it. Pomni’s head sags back and she digs her fingers into her shirt as she moans. He scrapes his teeth over her thundering pulse before moving lower. He flicks his tongue over the junction between her neck and her shoulder before sucking hard, dangerously close to bruising. A sharper sound comes out of her. His hands roam over her sides, over her waist and down to grip her hips for a long moment before they move upward, his claws grazing her flesh as he pulls her shirt up. She hides her face against his shoulder and whines as the chilly air clings to her overheated skin. He hums against her in response, sucking on a spot at the base of her neck that makes her hips jerk against her will. His thumbs brush over her stomach and up her ribcage. When he pushes the fabric over her breasts, he presses into the softness of them with his palms. His thumbs brush over her painfully hard nipples and her eyes roll back in her head. “Oh God.”

Jax hums again, a low sound like he’s pleased by her shaking hands digging into his shirt and her halting, unsteady breaths. He scrapes his teeth against her neck once more before tightening his hands around her frame to pull her away from him. A short, bereft sound slips through her lips. How easily he maneuvers her small frame to hold her right how he wants her makes her whimper.

His mouth descends on her chest and all distress about not being pressed up against him evaporates immediately.

It’s exactly what she has desperately wanted for so long, exactly what she needs. He sucks her skin into his mouth and lets out a satisfied rumble at the way it makes her go rigid in his hands, smoothing his tongue over the captured spot before pulling hard. Pomni’s head sags back and she moans high and loud.

He digs his teeth in and she sobs.

He does it again and again, supporting her weight as she jerks and pants and claws at his shoulders, covering her tits in angry marks that throb with her heartbeat. The thick, syrupy pleasure accented by spikes of pain, dull as he sucks and sharp as he bites, is incredible. When he finally closes his lips over one of her nipples she thinks her lashes are wet. “Oh fuck.”

“You taste so good,” he breathes, hot and hungry against her damp flesh. She can feel his eyes burning into her but she’s too lost to open her own to meet them. He rolls his tongue over the unbearably sensitive bud again and her clit throbs painfully.

“Oh - my God,” she gasps. His claws press into her skin the tiniest bit harder and he exhales against her as he slowly moves his face to her other breast. He pauses there, drawing it out, watching her. When he finally sucks her other nipple into his mouth her insides clench so tight it hurts.

She doesn’t know how much time has passed when he finally separates his mouth from her with a small pop and a noise low in his throat like he doesn’t want to do it. He lifts her higher, startling her again by moving her like she weighs nothing. He nips at the sensitive skin between her breasts. “Is this better than him?”

“Yes,” she moans, clinging to his shirt so hard she’s probably damaging it. His big hands tighten on her body. He pulls her closer and she makes a tiny, wanting sound, her fingers finding their way around his shoulders. Jax’s mouth meets hers again like he’s trying to suck her soul out of her body. When he breaks his lips from her own she whines and tries to follow.

“Wait here,” he rasps, shifting her back from his lap, his eyes glowing in the low light. It physically hurts to obey but she nods. Her ears are ringing as he backs out of the car and tugs his pants back up. When he comes over to her side and pulls her door open the muted moonlight illuminates his silhouette in a way that’s breathtaking. He leans down to her and she all but lunges for him, wrapping her arms around his broad shoulders and moaning as he slides his hands around the small of her back to find her mouth with his. One of his palms roams down to grope her ass roughly and he tears himself from her mouth to kiss down the line of her throat and between her tits. The way his back flexes under her desperately clinging hands makes her vision go spotty.

“Jax,” she moans breathlessly, so overcome with desire it’s making her shaky and weak.

“Yeah,” he responds absently, pressing his lips and his teeth in a haphazard constellation across her skin. His palms slide around to her stomach and he splays his fingers over her torso to ease her back from where she's clinging to him. His eyes are all but glowing as he draws back to take her in. He leans fully into the car, keeping one hand on her body, and he’s so tall his back presses against the ceiling. She stares up at him, mesmerized at how he towers over her, how immense his presence is in the enclosed space. “Get on your knees for me, baby.”

Another moan tears out of her before she realizes it’s happening. He lets out a breath as she turns in her seat and one of those big, warm hands settles on her lower back to bend her over. Pomni stares in a daze at her own hands, pale where they’re braced on the black leather, her nails reflecting the dim overhead light. She shivers when he slides his palms appraisingly down her bare waist to tug her leggings down.

The amazed, disbelieving groan he lets out at how wet she is makes her whine and squeeze her eyes shut.

“Tell me, Pomni.” He gropes her with both hands, kneading into the softness and spreading her open to appreciate the sight. “He ever make you this wet?”

“No,” she mumbles faintly, gasping and squirming as he runs his hands slowly over her soft, shockingly warm skin. He removes one hand (it makes her want to cry) and she hears him readjusting behind her.

He steadies her, the grip on her waist firm, taking in the sight she makes and giving himself a few slow strokes. “Interesting,” he murmurs, like the answer wasn’t shamefully obvious. The weight of his cock when he rests it on her body makes a high, shaky sound slip past her lips. It’s more than intimidating. She knows he’s savoring this moment, reveling in how small she is, how far up her back it rests. It’s going to take some effort to get it inside her. The thought makes her drip down one of her thighs. 

He kneads at her hip, his gaze like ice where it tracks her slick streaking down her pale skin. The warmth of his hips brushing against her recedes and she bites her lip to keep a sound of protest from escaping.

Both of his hands move to spread her open, the cool air hitting her where she is aching for him with every rapid heartbeat. He groans from deep in his chest. She nearly chokes on her tongue when he presses a thumb against her opening. He pushes it slowly into her, aided by how impossibly slick she is, and the stretch of just that makes her keen. Jax lets out a quiet laugh.

“He really left you this deprived?” He pumps his thumb deeper into her, excruciatingly unhurried, then eases it back. Pomni bites her lip in a pitiful attempt at stifling a whimper as her body flutters hungrily around the intrusion. “I’m surprised you haven't started begging me already.”

Pomni tries to hold in a moan when he pushes back in again and fails. It's a miserable, ashamed sound, peaking as the digit sinks deeper inside her than anything has been in as long as she can remember. It feels like he senses this as he revels in her near frantic, shaking need, admiring how snug she is around only his thumb as he maps her out. He draws it out of her with a wet noise, damning in the hushed space between her strained breaths. He returns it to holding her lips open. Pomni can feel his eyes on the glistening, velvety parts of her that now twitch in protest at the absence. She has never felt so utterly, humiliatingly exposed.

He speaks softly like they’re surrounded by people and he doesn’t want anybody to hear. The grin in his voice is obvious. “You let him hit it raw?”

She feels herself dripping more. She feels him watch it happen.

“No,” she whispers.

When he lets go of her with one hand to line himself up, adrenaline tears through her, leaving her shivering and breathless.

A desperate noise slips out of her as he pushes in and slowly opens her up. It’s impossibly smooth, the first inch and then the second, how soaked she is making the slide easier than it should be when he has so much width. The hand around her waist tightens a little, just to keep her still. She can feel how much he’s restraining himself.

“Oh-” Her arms try to give out as he rocks in further. The stretch is really starting as he works his way in more in one agonizingly steady, unhurried movement. He’s hitting parts of her all at once nobody has before, and it doesn’t feel like he’s even halfway in. The heat, the pressure, the way the silky-smooth flesh wrapped around that dizzying hardness feels as her body greedily accepts it-

“God you’re tight.”

Pomni bites her lip as a whine builds in her throat.

He slows to a stop for a moment, just taking her in, rubbing his thumbs over her pale skin to soothe her while she shudders and her chest works as she pulls in halting, frantic breaths. It feels so good already she thinks she’s going insane.

Without a word he firms up his grip on her body and starts moving again.

A desperate, guttural moan tears out of her as he pushes almost fully in, spreading her open in a way her mind struggles to wrap itself around. The size of him is staggering. Her insides spasm on him, trying to make sense of it, amplifying the impact until her legs are shaking and drool leaks from her mouth. Finally, after what feels like a maddening length of time, the mind-numbing slide stops, leaving her reeling from the pressure, the dull ache in her stomach, the slight sting at her opening where she’s twitching fitfully around him. He finally lets out the breath he was holding as the knot presses against her swollen lips. The short fur brushing against her thighs grounds her as she struggles to comprehend the magnitude of sensation.

“Shit,” he rasps out above her. “You feel amazing, Pomni.”

He draws back slowly with an awed, quiet sigh, and she can feel him taking in the way it looks as those inches emerge from her trembling body with a filthy, slick sound before he pushes them back in.

“Oh God,” she sobs, her vision going blurry. “Oh fuck.” 

“Yeah,” he agrees, and he’s still moving, still slow enough to savor it. He picks up speed so gradually it’s torturous. When he does begin to move a little faster she almost regrets how eager she was for it. The way he fits inside her, the way he opens her up, knocks the air out of her lungs and makes something in her brain short out every time he slides deep.

“You feel even better than I imagined,” he murmurs, holding her still as he rocks into her. “And I knew you’d feel incredible.”

The praise makes the thick, syrupy pleasure drifting through her body go white-hot and shimmering. She’s stunned to feel tears stinging her eyes, the cool, thin light of the moon and the warm glow of the overhead light swimming to life in tiny prisms where they fill her vision.

“Yeah?”

“Mmn.” He rocks in deep and squeezes her hips when it makes her whimper. “Why? You need to hear it?” Pomni bites her lip hard and screws her eyes shut.

She's learning quickly that nothing gets past him.

“You're so tight it's crazy. I didn't know somebody could get this wet,” he rasps, and his hips quicken a little more. “It's like silk. God, you feel like you were made for me.”

“Oh my God,” she chokes out. She readjusts one of her hands on the seat to steady herself as he starts moving faster. The car is beginning to rock, the small space rapidly becoming suffocatingly warm. For a split second Pomni wonders if anyone else is on this road, if they’re going to be seen by anybody driving past. To her horror, the idea thrills her. She looks out the driver’s side window toward the dark road and finds the lines of the trees and the asphalt blurred as the glass begins to fog up.

“Perfect body too. And these-” His hips slow as he rocks deep, bending to grope her tits in his big hands, rolling her nipples between his fingertips as he pushes slowly against the end of her canal. Her throat closes off on the whine it draws out of her. Her body seizes around him as he presses deep enough for it to almost hurt. “Can’t believe they weren’t all marked up.” He draws back and thrusts in again, his palms on her chest keeping the movement from knocking her off-balance. “Can’t believe you’re not bein’ used like you deserve.”

A string of drool drips from her bottom lip to pool on the leather below her.

“Can’t believe-” He fucks into her a little harder, forcing her forward into his waiting, greedy hands. “-somebody’d leave you all alone like that. All pretty and lost. Just waiting to get scooped up.”

“Fuck,” she sobs.

“Lucky me,” he growls, and he pinches her nipples until she jerks and squeezes tight on him, leaning down to lick a hot stripe up her neck and the side of her face. “He doesn’t get you to make noises like this, does he?”

“No,” she moans.

He plants a knee on the seat and he’s so tall that the shift causes his head to brush against the car door above her. In that breathless moment, the scent of his cologne and his clothes and the heady musk of his sweat washes over her, making her head swim. That’s all the warning she gets before he begins to thrust into her harder, the gentle swaying of the car turning into a jarring rock as the suspension starts to creak from side to side.

“He doesn’t make you feel good like this, does he?”

“N-ah-no-”

“He doesn’t fill you up like this, does he?” He rolls his hips until she’s writhing and gasping, helpless to do anything other than take it.

“God. O-oh God, no.”

“Hm.” He nips at the shell of her ear, one of his canines catching and making her cry out sharply. “Didn’t think so.” He exhales against the side of her face, resting his cheek against her temple as he pushes so deep it makes her legs nearly give out. “Pity.”

The sounds of him driving into her are getting wetter, more humiliatingly obscene as he gains momentum, rising above her climbing moans and his harsh breaths as he exerts himself more. She feels the flex of muscle against her back as he leans to brace his hand against the door above her head and she gasps when it lets him drive himself deeper with every snap of his hips. The next thrust spears directly into that sensitive spot deep inside her, the feeling knocking the breath from her lungs, so intense it almost hurts. Her legs give out from the impact and the hand wrapped around her hip eases the short fall as she crumples against the center console. The cool material feels amazing against her feverish skin.

“Oh fuck,” she murmurs, the cloying build of a sob in her throat making her voice weak. The wet slide of him, the staggering feeling of so much as he draws back a few maddening inches and plunges back in, is like nothing she has ever experienced. The arm he’s using to brace himself against the door disappears from the periphery of her vision and a heady mix of alarm and anticipation fills her when he wraps that hand around her other hip to get more leverage. He’s so big that his fingers nearly touch where they encircle her body. He starts to use more of his strength, his grip tightening to hold her in place as his hips snap forward harder. It’s so good she feels like she might be dying.

“God, I can smell how excited you are,” he grates out between thrusts, “it’s crazy.”

Without being able to move, she feels so much more acutely how his knot is meeting her body with every slap of his hips, how it’s just barely beginning to push into her, the alarming thickness of it testing her opening that is resisting less and less the more she is dragged beneath the surface. Pomni muses distantly that something that big pressing between her lips should terrify her, that under normal circumstances it would. Instead it only makes her feel smaller and more powerless, makes something inside her go warm and pliant. The thought of his body trying to fully dominate and claim hers flips a switch deep inside her, something carnal, turning her mind so hazy she can barely think through it.

His claws dig into her skin until she’s scared they’ll break it. “You like that?”

“Yes,” she groans, and it’s like a dam breaking. “Yes, God, yes, yes, yes, please, it’s so good-”

“Fuck, Pomni.”

“-please don’t stop, please-”

“I won’t, baby, don’t worry.”

He slams into her again, so hard the impact makes her vision white out, and she’s coming with a strangled scream. His hand is over her mouth in a heartbeat and tears stream from her eyes as he knocks overwhelmed, muffled sobs out of her. “Shhh,” he breathes into her ear, only fucking into her harder. “That’s it, just like that. Good girl.”

It’s all she’s ever wanted.

She doesn’t know how long the orgasm goes on for, only that she stops breathing as the pleasure tears through her, her insides clenching like a vice around his cock as he takes it from her, never letting up. She’s wet all down her thighs when her senses begin to haltingly come back and his palm is damp with spit. He keeps his big hand wrapped around her face, holding her head up as he growls and drags it out as long as possible. He nips at the side of her face. “Still with me?”

Pomni responds with a throaty, overwhelmed whine.

“Fuck you’re hot,” he groans into her hair. “I’m close, Pomni.”

“Please,” she gasps the second he uncovers her mouth, hanging her head, the strings of drool stretching from his hand as he moves it to dig his fingers into the softness of her tits again. “Oh God, please - I need it-”

“Yeah?” He stops groping her to wrap both hands around her waist and his thrusts become punishing. She thinks she might come again before he does. “Need me to stuff you full?”

“Fuck yes,” she whines, voice ragged, her face wet with tears and spit.

“Shit,” he groans under his breath, “just hold on for me.” It’s all she can do to keep her arms from collapsing as he slams into her, the pressure on her aching insides all-encompassing. She can feel him getting harder, can feel the knot swelling where it bumps insistently up against her swollen lips, spreading her opening just enough to leave her breathless. “I’m - gonna fill you up real nice, I-”

“Give me-” She drags in a breath, trying to think, trying to get her tongue to work, as need surges within her. “-your knot, give it to me, please-”

“P-Pomni, I-” He falters for the first time, his fingers digging into her skin, his hips jerking forward against his will, his thrusts becoming uneven. “-are you sure you want that?”

“-please, I-”

“You don't know what you're asking,” he gasps, an aggressive edge to his frantic words. He drives deep into her with another wet slap and Pomni whines, digging her short nails into the seat. “Once I do it we c-can't-”

“-I don't care,” she cries, a string of spit spilling over her bottom lip and connecting with the leather. “I need it, I need all of you in me, Jax, please, God, please.”

The growl that rips from him makes her shudder. He fucks into her so hard it begins to slip almost halfway in with every thrust, dizzyingly close to the apex of it. She chokes on her own saliva, clawing into the seat.

“Gonna make you mine, Pomni.” She whines pitifully beneath him, tears leaking from her eyes. “Gonna pump you full, gonna knot you, gonna make you take it-”

Pomni can’t see anymore. His thrusts wrench the words from her, raw with desperation. “Oh my God please.”

It pops into her with a sudden, devastating stretch that makes her vision go out again and rips a hoarse cry from her as he floods her insides with heat. It’s earth-shattering, the filthy, incredible feeling of him filling her in thick spurts as he eases the knot snugly in deeper. She pulls tight around the impossible, suffocating fullness. The orgasm it drags out of her is like a tidal wave, crashing into her and washing away everything that isn’t him. Jax lets out a gorgeous, low groan above her as she shakes and wails into the seat, spasming around him. It feels so good to finally have his body pressed tight to hers, the soft fur of his hips and his strong thighs a stark contrast to the incomprehensible weight of his knot spreading her open and plugging her up and the deep, molten stretch of his cum pumping into her. The squeezing of her insides around him drags out for long, agonizing moments, leaving her boneless and shivering and aching sweetly, her mind emptied of everything that isn’t his scent and his voice and his hands and the way he's claiming her from the inside out.

“F-fuuuck,” he rasps breathlessly over her, rolling his hips, and he throbs against her abused insides as he pumps more into her. Pomni hiccups pitifully into the seat as another thick spurt hits that agonizingly sensitive space and then another, nowhere for it to go with her plugged so completely. Jax groans from deep in his chest, ragged and loud. He's pumping her so full that the aching of her bruised cervix is superseded by a sensation impossibly deeper.

It hits her that what she's feeling, a faint tightness, a tenderness in a space at the bottom of her stomach, is her womb filling up so much he’s stretching it. It sends another rolling shockwave of pleasure through her, her body seizing around him.

“Oh my God,” she sobs. 

“Good girl,” he sighs, grinding against her, the gentle friction against her swollen lips and her clit making her jerk where she’s slumped beneath him. “Take all of it for me, Pomni.”

He’s still filling her.

“P-please.” Her voice is wrecked, coming out as a broken whimper. Another sharp little ache in her stomach makes her flutter around him again.

“Ah-” His fingers dig tighter into the flesh of her hips as his cock twitches through a particularly large burst. She doesn’t know how he still hasn’t emptied himself fully into her. That vulnerable, tender place deep inside of her throbs as he fills her even more, the pressure of it stunning, the gradual stretch making her eyes roll back in her skull. Her mind goes fleetingly to how satisfyingly heavy his balls were in her hand, to the fact it’s not going to stop until every last drop is shot deep inside her, to how it’s going to stay there until his body has decided that it’s enough, that she’s been thoroughly bred. “-that’s so good-”

“Oh God.” The words slip through her lips of their own accord, barely scraping past her throat, sore from sliding him deep into it and raspy from him making her scream. If her body had the strength left in it to come again she thinks it probably would. “Jax.”

“M’almost there - almost - ah fuck.”

Jax’s claws dig into her hips as he jerks against her, pulsing hard, and a final, searing shot of cum floods her coated insides. It shoves her forward, maybe an inch, dragging her face through the tears and spit she has collapsed into. The pressure sends a violent shiver through her and a hoarse, warbling whine leaves her mouth. The heady scent of sweat and arousal fills her senses as her lungs struggle for starved, scraping breaths, and he sighs, a beautifully shaky sound.

Slowly, he slumps over her, releasing her hips to brace his arms on the seat, caging her in between them. He presses his head against the door, his ears hanging limp. “Holy shit.”

If her mouth was working, Pomni would echo his sentiment.

For a long moment they stay like that, suspended in euphoric, utter exhaustion. Jax’s hips still rock against her the littlest bit like he can’t stop it, her insides fluttering around him with each heartbeat, the sweet ache deep in her stomach becoming easier to make sense of the longer it’s there. Being stuffed so full of his cum is doing something funny to her head - it’s a lot like the sluggish, blurry warmth that comes with drinking, but it’s heavier and hotter. She is completely limp, her muscles completely relaxed. She wonders vaguely if it has something to do with being knotted - if on some deeper level her mind has shut down at being so thoroughly and viscerally dominated. Her body twitches on it at the thought.

After what feels like minutes, a span of time distorted by how completely hollowed out her head is, Jax shifts over her. She whimpers in protest when the heat of his body moves away.

“Hold on,” he grunts, and another weak sound leaves her when he leans back in the cramped space and it changes the pressure of him inside her. One big hand wraps around her waist and she’s suddenly being lifted like she weighs nothing, her head swimming when he carefully pulls her backward with him. It makes her dizzy when a strong arm wraps around her middle to hold her against his chest. He maneuvers them until he can sit back in the passenger seat, and he sighs with relief as he settles into it. He gently eases up how hard he’s holding onto her to let her weight pull her down more firmly into his lap. The pressure of being stuffed so full shifts with gravity and sends a bolt of heat through her that tears a breathless, awed sound from her lips. She blinks down at her body in a daze. Her tits are covered in hickeys and her nipples look almost bruised from all the attention. Her thighs are a mess of her own slick. She feels like her abdomen looks swollen - just enough that she’s not entirely sure it’s not in her head.

“All right,” he murmurs after a moment, “come here.”

The strong arm around her middle moves to her hip, steadying her, and she lets out a startled sound when he slides down in the seat, shifting the weight of his cock inside her again. He grunts at the way she seizes tight around him at the change. She looks over her shoulder at him, shaking a little from the strain on her body and the shock of everything that’s happened, and his lidded eyes meet hers. He tips his head in a half-nod to indicate toward him and she realizes what he’s doing.

Taking in a breath to steel herself, Pomni gathers her strength to pull her legs up from where they’re dangling off of his lap and the seat. She shoves her leggings off of one leg with an unsteady hand.

Jax’s palms rest on her sides, squeezing enough to reassure her. Her heart thumps against the bottom of her throat as she tries to twist a little. The way the knot resists makes her gasp sharply.

“I’ve got you,” he says softly, firming up his grip more. “Just breathe.”

“O-okay, I - ah-”

He manages to turn her a little bit where she’s stuck in his lap. The seal of his knot breaking a little sends a jolt through her, the sensation more shocking than painful. She finds his eyes over her shoulder again, trembling, her breaths coming shorter. It occurs to her when she notices that he’s gritting his teeth that the feeling must be more than intense for him too. Pomni presses a hand against the opening of the car door to brace herself and he helps her turn around a little more. She hears a whine escape her as her aching insides shift more around his knot. It hits her again just how mind-numbingly big it is.

It takes a few moments of careful maneuvering. Her hips and her thighs ache as she bends her knee close to her to shift it over his middle and, after taking a few seconds to breathe, draws her other leg up to bracket him between them. Miniscule trickles of his cum escape to run hot over her oversensitive insides, and every one makes her mind slip back toward the fuzzy, drunken warmth that she has to fight to pull herself out from. His gaze is locked on her through the whole process, taking in the rapid rise and fall of her chest, her tiny flinches, where she rests her shaky hands as she tries to help him. However it feels for her to be squeezing tight and slowly twisting around him, he’s suppressing it, focusing solely on her.

When she’s finally facing him, her legs tucked on either side of him where he’s slumped down in the seat, her hands are shaking and her heart is thumping shallowly against her ribcage. He pulls her toward him with a broad hand in the small of her back and she goes happily. The feeling of his firm stomach as she settles against him sends a winding coil of heat through her and she sighs unsteadily as she rests the side of her face against his shoulder. She breathes him in - nice cologne, faint, clean detergent, the musk of fresh sweat, the sweet, earthy smell that she thinks is his fur itself. Their mingled arousal.

She feels so small in his lap, so fragile pressed close to his strength.

A soft, scratchy hum leaves her as her eyes flutter closed. His claws feather down her spine, tracing the bumps of her vertebrae. When he gets to her waist and she shivers and squirms against him, he huffs out a quiet, satisfied chuckle above her. One of her hands, she realizes, is clinging at his side. She slides the other one up toward the center of his chest. The fur there that just peeks out of the collar of his snug shirt is hypnotically soft.

“So.” She clears her throat after the word barely comes out. She slips her fingertips just below the fabric, tracing mindless patterns there. “How long is this supposed to, um, last?”

Jax makes a thoughtful sound, grazing the tips of his claws slowly back up her spine. “Can be anywhere from like ten to thirty minutes.”

Pomni’s eyes open. “Thirty minutes?”

He shrugs. The shit-eating grin is audible in his voice. “Usually.”

Her body treacherously squeezes on him at his tone. “Usually?”

“Could be for up to an hour in rare cases,” he drawls, looking out the door and up at the sky. His hand trails leisurely back down as the other one settles on her upper thigh. “Why,” he teases, “you got somewhere to be?”

Her eyes flutter closed again. “Just … home.”

His voice thrums through him as she presses her face closer, her cheek against the muscle there. “As you’ll recall, I was getting you home.”

She hums in acknowledgement as his wandering hand slides down to knead gingerly into the swell of her ass. “That’s true,” she murmurs. She wishes she was pressed up against him with no clothing in the way so she could feel that short, incredibly soft fur all over. As she runs her fingers back and forth over his chest, she realizes that she can feel his heartbeat - shallow and seemingly still elevated. She nudges her face closer to press her ear to his body, and how quickly it's thumping causes a surprised little flutter in her stomach.

“Thanks to your rash decisions, though, I get you all to myself a little while longer.”

Pomni thinks she should snark back at him but she's really distracted by the strangely comforting feeling of being full of his cum and the whooshing of his blood beneath her ear. His heart really is beating fast - she wonders if it's a rabbit thing, maybe. She has started running her fingers slowly up the plane between his pecs, against the grain of his fur, then down, smoothing it back into place. He squeezes his handful of her ass again and a throaty, soft noise bubbles out of her.

“Actually,” he muses, kneading her thigh with his other hand, “if we weren't out here I’d probably get you off again to kill time.”

“Oh my God,” she groans, hiding against his chest as heat rushes to her face and she twitches tight around him. The thought of him laying her back and brushing his fingertips over her clit while she’s still so stuffed makes the gradually dissipating warmth curl sweetly all through her.

Jax lets out a single, short laugh. “No way. Would you like that?” She childishly presses her face harder into him. It feels like that's his opportunity to mock her, and it surprises her when he doesn't right away. His heart is beating even faster now. When his voice vibrates through him where she's pressed up against his body it sounds a little breathless. “There's no way you're that deprived,” he teases, and she can feel his gaze warming her as she stubbornly refuses to meet it. “Or are you just that much of a little freak?”

Pomni makes a soft, miserable sound, her body pulling tight around him for a long moment at his words. He chuckles, husky and low. She inhales sharply when another rivulet of thick, warm fluid leaks out around him, such a jarring feeling against her tender insides that her hips twitch reflexively against his. He kneads her ass with both hands, encouraging her to rock against him again, and she moans weakly and fists her hands in his shirt at the inescapable sensation of more cum slipping out of her.

“Mmmnohgod,” she whines, squeezing her eyes shut as he lets out a soft sound above her. “That f-feels - so weird.”

“It’ll take a while yet,” he tells her. “Does it feel bad?”

There's something indescribable about it - about the filthiness of it leaking out of her being drawn out for so long, of that intense pressure diminishing so maddeningly slowly it's barely a relief at all. “No,” she admits.

“Gonna be a mess,” he advises, not sounding sorry at all. She groans into his chest and he huffs out a quiet laugh. One of his hands feathers over her body again and settles against the back of her head, his nails grazing her scalp. It’s shockingly tender, and her heart twists painfully in her chest as she relaxes into him even more.

“Do - do you - have…” She needs to make him find something to catch it all with, she thinks, so exhausted that her brain is resisting her attempts to do anything other than just bask in the feeling. He scratches his claws gently through her hair again and she gives up.

“Relax,” he tells her softly, sliding his other hand to her thigh again and squeezing. “It’s fine.”

They rest there, soaking up one another’s body heat as the cool night air drifts around them and the trees rustle where they stand, tall and imposing. Jax lets out a soft sound as the swelling of the knot diminishes enough for more of his cum to leak sluggishly out of her, and she moans softly into his shirt, her body twitching around him at the feeling like it’s trying to keep it all in. The pressure inside her lessens a tiny bit more and leaves her shivering.

“Be honest.” He runs his fingertips up and down her leg, from the crook of her knee to her hip. “It feels kinda good, doesn’t it?”

“Feels so good,” she admits, too worn out and overwhelmed to lie. The breath he lets out makes it seem like he didn’t expect to get that answer. More spills out of her, so much it makes her feel faint, and she whines, high and soft, and her hips grind slowly against him on their own.

“Fuck,” he sighs under his breath, cradling her head tight to his body and palming her ass again. She’s kind of drifting, not fully in her body anymore, but how affected he sounds does something to her mind.

It is, by far, the most visceral, intimate thing she has ever experienced.

He sounds shaken when he nudges his jaw against her temple and murmurs, “you really are a little freak, aren’t you?”

“Shut up,” she hisses, and he snorts.

After another few minutes of their bodies gradually coming back down Jax finally reaches around her to grab for something in his glove box. Pomni grumbles in protest at him shifting and disrupting the contented doze she had fallen into. She feels him carefully swipe along his upper thighs where he’s been leaking out of her. “What’s that?”

“A rag,” he tells her, and she flinches when he gingerly presses it against her.

“You-” She sighs shakily at the soft fabric brushing against her aching body where she’s stretched around him. “-you just keep rags in here?”

“Uh, yeah.” He keeps cleaning her. She’s not unhappy about the way it makes his abs flex against her. “For detailing my car.”

Her first sluggish thought is that that’s hilarious when his seats are now a complete biohazard. Her second thought makes her eyes open wide. “Have you used that one?”

“What?” He laughs. “You don’t want your ass havin’ that new car smell?”

“I’m going to kill you,” she mumbles, clinging to him. “If I have some kind of reaction I’m killing you.”

“Yeah, yeah, okay. I’m gonna pull out.”

“Wait.” She grabs onto him tighter. “Wait, wait a minute.”

Jax carefully slides the cloth - it really is soft - between his thighs and where she’s sitting on them. The hand in her hair shifts to her upper back, warm and solid between her shoulder blades.

She tries to mentally prepare herself for what it’s going to feel like. She exhales unsteadily. “Okay.”

His hands wrap around her hips again as she steadies her own on his shoulders, and he slowly lifts her off of him. She has no control of the sound that comes out of her at his knot catching at her sore opening for a breathless moment before coming free, at the obscene amount of cum pouring out of her as he slips himself gently out of her body. Her insides try to cramp up at the sudden lack of comforting fullness, and the relief of the pressure deep in her stomach makes her thighs shake. It almost feels like an orgasm.

Pomni opens her eyes to find him staring at her, wide-eyed.

“H-holy shit,” she gasps, twitching. Her heartbeat echoes in her ears and she realizes there are tears in her eyes again at the incomprehensible amount of sensation.

Jax looks at her in what seems like amazement. “That is the hottest thing I’ve ever seen,” he murmurs like he doesn’t realize he’s vocalizing the thought. She whimpers at the overwhelming honesty in his words and expression. He carefully lowers her back onto his lap and she presses herself up against him, shaking and trying to breathe deeply. His voice is quiet, stunned. “You took so much of me.”

He sounds awed. He sounds proud. Pomni wants to crawl out of her skin and die. She wants to wrap her arms around him and breathe him in and never let go.

She bites back an exhausted laugh a few moments later when he silently reaches around her to grab another cloth out of the glovebox.

They stay like that for a while longer, Pomni snuggled close to him as what’s left inside her slowly drips out, periodically making her shiver. His big hands find her hips and stay there as he looks outside, watching the clouds drift overhead, the moonlight turning them silvery.

“All right.” His hands squeeze her gently, pulling her from where she had lost herself in the sound of the breeze rustling through the leaves and the steady thud of his heartbeat. “Better get you back.”

She pulls away from him reluctantly. Her thighs and her back ache when she does.

It’s as graceful as they can manage, him lifting her off of his lap again and using the ruined rags to try to clean himself up a little more. Pomni pulls her leggings back up to her knees despite how weak her legs are. He hops out and fixes his jeans, and she tries to get redressed as well as she can, falling back against the seat and sighting, completely worn out. She watches him shamelessly as he smooths his rumpled shirt and runs his fingers through the fur atop his head to collect himself. He really is tall.

Pomni doesn't let herself contemplate the magnitude of what she has done as she tugs her leggings back into place and he climbs back into the driver's seat, fully aware that she does not have the bandwidth for a panic attack. Strangely, there's a part of her that doesn't think one's coming at all. Her mind, which has been crowded with a rising and falling sea of voices and thoughts all warring against one another for weeks, is quiet.

When he pulls onto the road, it’s as eerily empty as it was before.

“So.” He glances over at her like he wasn’t expecting her to say anything. “What are you doing with the rest of your night?”

“Oh.” He pauses for a moment. “Probably just gonna shower and sleep. Maybe watch something.” He lets out a snicker. “Hopefully my roommate won’t keep me awake barfing all night.”

Pomni winces. “Yeah, I hope he doesn’t either.”

“Oh, uh.” She’s surprised when she looks up at him to see something like unease on his features. “Do you need anything from - our place?”

“No,” she tells him. “I didn't leave anything there.” Absurdly, heat rushes to her face when she adds, “thanks.”

“Yeah.” They pass a tiny gas station and a bank and then the campus appears, the tall, ornate streetlights filling the surrounding sky with a hazy glow. “You’re - in the old building, right?”

It’s the oldest one on the campus, made of multicolored brick and prettier than the recent, utilitarian additions. “Yeah,” she murmurs. He signals and turns onto the private road that leads there.

“Huh!” She glances up to find him looking at the clock on the dashboard, bemused. “Only one AM! You’ll have time to get some shuteye and be up bright and early in the morning.”

“I’m dreading it,” she mutters as they pull onto the lane that the old dorms are on.

“Why’s that?” He quips. “You prone to hangovers? Gonna be hit with all-consuming regret over your bad decisions?”

“Because I have to break up with Gummigoo.”

For some reason he has no sarcastic response, no gloating remark. Pomni glances over to see genuine surprise on his face.

Did he really think she'd go back to that after everything that happened?

“Uh.” He seems to be at a loss for words. “He's not gonna flip out on you, is he?”

The suffocating dread she has felt every time she found herself thinking about ending things with him, before she would snap herself out of it and convince herself that things were fine, is almost completely absent. She lets out a humorless laugh. “I’m going to be a piece of shit and do it over the phone.”

“Nah,” he murmurs as she stares at her hands. “That's probably a better idea, honestly.”

They drive the last stretch in silence. Pomni watches him surreptitiously as the warm, incandescent streetlights of the older part of the campus fill the car. They turn his fur a beautiful, soft lilac and make his immense eyes look bioluminescent. Seeing him painted in the hues of the quieter, less busy part of the campus feels very strange - it makes him seem softer, more unsettlingly real. He pulls alongside her building and shifts into park. She turns a little in her seat to reach for the handle, hoping that she'll be able to get to her room without anybody catching sight of the blooming bruise of a hickey or the mess that is seeping into and probably through her leggings.

“Wait.”

Pomni’s breath catches in her throat when he leans closer to her. She blinks when he reaches into the back seat.

He sits back with a bundle of fabric in one hand that she realizes is a jacket. “Here.”

“Oh,” she utters dumbly. It's soft and heavy when she takes it from him. Her heart flutters when she drapes it around her shoulders and puts her arms through the sleeves. It swallows her up when she tugs it into place, and the smell of his cologne washes over her. It will easily conceal what a mess she is. Her hands aren't working well enough to navigate the zipper so she just tugs it close, fighting the urge to press her face to the fabric. “Thanks.”

“You gonna be able to walk?”

Pomni stares at him. “Yeah. Of course.”

“I’ll believe it when I see it.” He grins crookedly and her heart feels like it does a backflip. “How about you try it out before I drive off and you collapse in the bushes?”

She rolls her eyes and fails to suppress the smile that blooms on her face. She opens his door and puts her feet on the ground. If her legs shake, she refuses to acknowledge it. The breeze caresses her face and feels heavenly against the back of her neck, and she makes her way around the front of his car with relatively little issue. She bends down a little at his window and his gaze flickers up from where it was lingering on her body.

“See?” She can feel the flush on her face as she holds those lazy, yellow eyes. “I’m great.”

“I’m not convinced,” he drawls softly, then his smirk turns wolfish. “Do a twirl for me.”

“Fuck you.” She bites her lip as he lets out a breathy laugh. It takes a second for her to swallow her nerves. “Thank you, Jax.”

His pupils flicker between either of her eyes for a moment. “No problem.” She pulls his jacket tighter around her, collecting herself, and turns toward the building.

“Pomni.”

She very nearly jumps. The breeze tosses the long strands of her hair as she looks back, wide-eyed.

His expression is unreadable save for the mirth glittering in his yellow eyes. “Night.”

After taking a breath, she gives him a small smile. “Goodnight, Jax.”

Nobody is around as she crosses the lobby and heads for the short flight of stairs to her room. She almost stops to look out the tall, old windows to see if he's still there but makes herself keep walking.

She needs a shower, her toothbrush, and ibuprofen, she tells herself as she unlocks her door. Not necessarily in that order, but they all need done before she sits down, because once she does she’ll be out. Before she starts on any of that, she pushes her door shut behind her, takes two handfuls of his jacket, and breathes it in. She’s achy and gross and completely mentally depleted. It still makes something flutter sweetly in her chest.

She calls Gummigoo the next morning. He sounds pretty beaten up but he listens to her as she talks. He's shockingly resigned, not making any efforts to protest her framing of things or convince her to reconsider. He doesn't offer any explanation, ask if she’s okay, or apologize when she pauses. When she stumbles through the final sentence she’d rehearsed two dozen times, her throat closing up against a sob, he exhales, thinks for a second, and simply says, “Okay.” He tells her he’ll drop her things off while she’s in class on Monday before hanging up. As she's crying on her couch, it occurs to her that he almost sounded relieved.

She comes back Monday afternoon to a bag sitting on her welcome mat. When she gets inside and opens it, all she finds are a tank top she forgot she owned and her old, worn copy of Heart of Darkness.

Three days later Jax shows up at her door with a six pack of beer, Chinese food, and a flash drive.

“I’ve got fifty pirated movies on this thing I guarantee you’ve never seen before.”

Without a word, she steps back and lets him in.

They fuck every night for the next three weeks except for two - the first time on her couch fifteen minutes into the movie she picked, later on the floor in her room, bent over her small kitchen counter, in her shower. They mostly end up tangled up in her bed, trying to kiss one another to breathlessness, biting and clawing and finding the positions that make her sob until she loses her voice. The two exceptions are the nights when she tells him she needs to study for a huge test coming up.

He spends those evenings sitting in her room with her, reading her books or messing around on his phone or dropping pellets of food into her fish tank and watching their small, shimmering bodies as they dart after them. He falls asleep on her bed next to her as she flips through her textbooks and goes over her notes, the soft fur of his face pressed into the edge of her pillow.

She never finds her charger.