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The first one to say it out loud was Ace.
It was one of those chilly nights of late summer and the breeze swaying back in your face from the ocean smelled of salt and freedom. There was something utterly petrifying about the sound of waves crashing into the mighty rocks beneath all those miles of cold stone you two were laying upon—something both maddening and invigorating that vibrated through you with a rare intensity.
“ You know you’re not really our sister, right?” the words rolled out of him all of a sudden, promptly dismissing the idyllic candor of the moment you had been silently sharing up until then.
You turned to look at him, incapable of containing hurt and disdain from dancing across your features, shaping your lips in an inevitable pitiful pout. He leveled you back with a cheeky grin tho, one that made it impossible to think his intentions as foul as you’d rendered them to be when you’d first heard the statement. Still, you hated that smirk of his all the same. It was the crushing evidence that he didn’t even consider how hurtful such a comment could be for you.
“ How’d you figure that?” you teased regardless.
Sure, you knew you four weren’t real siblings, but since you’d fled your hometown and stumbled into the trio in those damn woods they had a habit of wandering around all those years ago, you’d let yourself accommodate to the comforts of a family of some sort nonetheless. Granted, Ace, Sabo, and Luffy had proven to be an insufferable and extremely nosy bunch through the years you’d spent at their side, but you loved them as much as you’d imagine one would their siblings.
Not that you’d know the feeling from experience, of course. You’d escaped your household because of the horrors that crept inside, and you’d never known the solace of pure, unconditional love. Not from your biological parents, nor any other figure in your life until them three.
“ You’re just not”
You rolled your eyes at him with that. It was just so typical of Ace to not even make the effort of explaining his logic to you. But you knew he deemed Sabo and Luffy as nothing else other than kin. Somehow, however, he’d always felt different towards you. He was already fifteen when you’d come along, although not much more mature than when he’d met Luffy, from what you had been told by the other two. You’ve had to put a whole lot of effort into having Ace finally accept your orbiting around them back then. You understood with time that he was reluctant to let people in because of his past. His being gloomy came from having to constantly wrestle with the fear of not being loved for who he was by the ones around him.
He’d accepted you, at last.
But then seven years later he blurted out such nonsense to you, expecting you to come to terms with the reality of being alone in a world full of evil and hurt.
“ Why are you saying this to me?” you huffed, squinting your eyes at him, watching bewitched as lights and shadows gracefully danced across his features—a reflection of the fire that still burned a few inches away from your bare feet.
In the previous seven years, there had been many nights when you couldn’t fall asleep and went to the cliff. It was a place of calm and solitude, a place good for lighting up a fire and letting thoughts soar into the sky. If you’d lay there quietly enough, you could imagine the wind weightlessly carrying them away beyond the clouds above, past the edge of the atmosphere itself, and into space. The further away you’d picture them getting, the lighter you’d feel, usually succumbing to slumber right there, only to have Ace and Sabo carry you back home come morning.
That specific night, however, it seemed Ace was having trouble sleeping as well, so you’d let him follow you through the woods and on top of the famous cliff. He’d snapped his fingers to ignite an ever-burning fire, one that wouldn’t need the constant adding of fallen branches for you two to keep warm the whole of the night.
Shit like that never failed to impress you, to be quite honest.
“ Because” he shrugged, if possible even more careless of your feelings “ You’re all grown up now. Better keep that in mind”
He was looking ahead of himself and across the vastness of the ocean, but you’d caught the sudden huskiness in his voice, you’d noted the unmistakable gruff of allusion staining his words equivocal, and you’d snorted at it.
He was starting to sound like men downtown when they drank a tad too much and dared whistling at you. Those who wouldn’t keep their filthy hands off of you even if asked politely. You always needed to respond to them in kind, always had to land a few punches to keep them off.
“ What’s that supposed to mean?” you quirked a brow, and he turned to look at you, his shameless eyes raking in search of your exposed legs stretching towards the flames, and you shivered at the way his gaze skimmed along the length of them before settling back into yours.
“ Means you’re hot”
It was spoken with an affectionate tone, yet a silent spark of mischief shimmered in his eyes nonetheless. It caught you off guard, it made your heart halt for just an instant, your cheeks promptly flushing crimson in embarrassment, and you couldn’t help but look away.
“ You shouldn’t say that” you muttered, and tried to excuse the quivering of your voice on the cool air of the night you’d basked into until then. As if the flames ahead of you and the ones seeping out from him weren’t enough to keep you warm.
A hearty chuckle rumbled out of him, and it echoed in your temples and through your chest as it started heaving.
“ Why not?”
You weren’t sure what to say, but it was suddenly very clear why he had been so intent on remarking how there was no blood relation between the two of you.
You shook your head to rid it of those presumptions.
“ Because… It’s weird” you hushed, rubbing your hands over your arms as a way to dissolve the trembling.
“ But it’s true” It was so silent, so quiet that you could’ve missed it beneath the loud thudding of your heart, had it been uttered even just a tad lighter.
You fell into a pregnant silence, the only sounds around you were the ones of cicadas chirping and waves incessantly roaring beneath the cliff.
“ Do you think I’m hot?” he asked after a few beats, and you caught your breath and turned to him, red on your cheeks but too indignant not to let him know how inappropriate such a question was.
“ Would you stop this?”
Maybe this was his new way of teasing you, you considered then. Perhaps he got tired of racing the lots of you or chasing you with worms on a stick to freak you out. And so, maybe, he’d figured he could spook you out with the kind of nonsense talk that would make any young woman cringe and hide her face in the mere comfort of her sweating palms.
“ Oh, c’mon…” he lightly giggled, apparently delighted by your discomfort and shameless in his bathing in it, too “ You can tell, I swear I’ll keep the secret”
You shied away from his eyes. You’d always found them way too intense to be able to bear them inspecting you in a moment as embarrassing as that one was turning out to be. But you couldn’t very well hold onto any other part of him to grant you a bit of peace from your feelings, either. Because dammit if he was right. He was very hot, and he fucking knew it, too.
You had no idea what exactly was about him. You’d always thought your attraction to him was intrinsic in the role he’d covered for all of you through the years. He’d always been the one to throw the first punch, leading the riots you all stumbled into in bars downtown, the first one to catch fish and prey to keep you all fed, the first one to get a job and provide a proper roof for the lot of you to live underneath. He was a role model more than anything else, to you.
However, looking at him then, as the fire ignited by his powers peppered his skin with bright flashes of red and yellow, you couldn’t very well deny how his good looks held part of the charm, too. You’d always loved his raven black hair. The way it messily cascaded down his features, delicately brushing along the line of his freckled cheeks and sharp jaw. His eyes were dark enough to lose yourself in them, even while still holding onto that sweet glint of chirm that he rarely let anyone rob him of any longer. And while your gaze traveled down his naked torso and drank in the sight of him comfortably splayed upon the grass beneath him, you couldn’t keep a sigh from escaping you, subsequently leaving you fidgeting with your hands in mortification.
With it, another pleased snicker left his lips, and your eyes flinched away, averting his gaze as if it could burn you alive on the spot.
“ That good, huh?”
“ Oh, shut up! You know you’re handsome” you were able to mutter as you pressed your thighs against your chest and hid your face in between your knees.
“ Am I?” his voice now sounded more along the lines of a purr, silken and cajoling, surely more confident in its aim to seduce after what you’d let slip past your lips. You’d never heard him use such a tone around you all.
“ What do you like about me?”
He’d drawn considerably closer by then, and you could feel it. His skin was warmer than anything you’d ever touched without burning, holding the promise of a comforting embrace and a raging passion simmering beneath the surface of fiery limbs.
“ Your eyes, I guess…” you admitted, blushing even further as you sank your cold nose into the valley between your knees.
“ How so?”
You felt his palm gently sneaking up your ankle, his breath closer and as hot as the flames dancing ahead of you.
“ They’re so intense…” you found yourself a bit breathless as his hand traveled up your leg, eliciting goosebumps to creep up behind.
You did think of stopping him then, but that’s all it remained— a thought. Fleeting, ethereal, never truly meant to be put into action.
“ Hmm…” You felt his low hum close enough to make you flinch, but even then you didn’t dare back away from his touch “ I like your eyes, too”
“ You do?”
Your heart was mad-paced, thumping in your throat as you dared take a peek at him.
He nodded lightly, freckled cheeks coloring red as he blew out: “ And I like your lips”
Your head lifted from its hiding place, your eyes big and fixed upon him as you’d let them travel down his features to look for his, just as he stretched them in a sly grin. You loved that smirk of his way too much—reveled in the way it seemed to hold truths you could never imagine yourself unraveling in the span of a lifetime.
“ I love your smile” you said, then. And his beam grew broader, more genuine on account of your confession.
“ What else?” he sounded breathless now, too.
His hand was resting on your knee, and you practically ached to touch him back, the impulse barely kept at bay by fear and shyness. But the closer he drew, the warmer you’d get, the less affected by those emotions you seemed to be. You heard the words before realizing having spoken them.
“ You’ve got such big arms…” Your smaller hands reached for one and wrapped around his bicep, igniting a chuckle out of him.
“ Like them, huh?”
You could only nod, then. He’d got you under some sort of spell you didn’t want to ever break, a trance that his voice and heat could have had last forever if they so willed.
But you should know better than to indulge in those types of games with him, right?
He inched closer, so close his lips ghosted across yours, so much that you felt as if you’d run a fever just by sitting by him long enough. His hot breaths crashed against you at the rhythm of your heartbeats—quick, stunning, erupting within you a sort of haze you’d never fallen prey to before. He was everywhere and all around, your head spinning as you inhaled the smoky scent of him clogging your nostrils.
“ Ace?” you mumbled faintly, and he looked at you.
“ Yeah?” gaze flickering between yours and your lips, and he sounded shreds away from giving into a desire from the likes of which you weren’t sure you would ever recover.
“ Is it bad that I want you to kiss me?” you uttered, then.
His eyes darkened further, and he licked his lips, avid as a predator would be in following its indomitable instincts to hunt, to dig claws and fangs into palpitating flesh with the selfish aim of ripping it apart.
“ Bad…” The word sounded like sin itself then, smooth like silk in rolling around his tongue, lingering on the very edge of his lips as he carefully pondered the statement, inching closer and closer to you, yearning for your wishes to be fulfilled, as well as his own “ I told you already, you’re not our sister”
He didn’t give you any more time to think it through, nor any time at all to breathe in before his mouth smashed on yours, hungrily claiming you as his arms hastily pulled you into his warm embrace.
You knew his blood ran hot. He’d become unbearable to be near on steamy summer days since he’d eaten the Mera Mera no Mi, as well as impossible not to want to snuggle up to on cold winter nights. But what you felt pressed against him at that very moment was something else entirely. If you hadn’t known of his powers, if you hadn’t seen them unfolding before your very eyes countless times already, you would've thought him on the verge of combustion. There was a raging fire vigorously crackling beneath the surface of his heated skin, a glow as greedy as his hands were proving to be as he skimmed them over your bare thighs and firmly anchored them to your hips before dragging you in his lap.
You gasped at the shift in position, eager to suck in some air as each of your knees pressed on the soft grass beneath you, your legs ungracefully sprawled for your body to perfectly lodge against his. You felt his palms creeping up the length of your barely covered back, and you shivered at the distinct contrast between the chilly air of the night and the unrestrainable passion of his ministrations.
“ Ace” you mumbled, unsure of how to even proceed at that point, uncertain of being able to handle whatever was gonna come next.
But at the mention of his name his fingers harshly dipped into your flesh, and as you hinted a moan in response he was quick to catch it in a searing kiss. Words of worry and woe melted at the advent of such exuberant affection, they surrendered to it and all but faded into nothing the moment his tongue slipped past the quiet parting of your lips.
Oh, lord.
He tasted so good. Like ocean waves and burning pine wood. Like fireworks in late summer nights and steamy bubble baths—the ones that have muscles unwind and minds unfold into calm hot water. His hand pulled you flush against his bare chest, and you almost recoiled from the ardent contact. You felt that same heat radiating through you just seconds after tho, welcoming you into him as if he were pulling a blanket around your shoulders. Still, you felt it all get to your head anyhow. His mere proximity was inebriating, and as you let seconds go by you felt yourself being lulled into complacency by the mere intensity of it. Your head was dizzy, your skin burning with desire and a sudden, uncontainable need to have him closer, no matter how incandescent he was getting, no matter if it ended up incinerating you.
He was careful in his motions, tender in placing a hand of his on your hip and ever so subtle when he eventually guided it towards him, his head jolting back as he contently exhaled at the pressure of you softly grinding onto his lap. That had you gasping for air, and as you drew back from him, hands securely placed on each of his strong shoulders, you saw him devilishly grinning up at you.
“ Sorry” A hint of wickedness colored his expression playful, and you ended up relaxing at the sight, despite his next words “ It’s just that you feel so good”
You were at a loss for words. It was clear you’d let things escalate way too quickly, lost yourself in how tremendously warm he was, how familiar despite the novelty of the circumstances. But as thrilling as it all was, it had to stop before you ended up regretting it.
You pressed your palms on his chest and swore you could see smoke steaming off of him. You tried to draw away but his fingers dipped into your flesh hard enough to bruise, you heard him growl ever so tamely at the gesture, before watching his eyes darken. You’d never seen him react to anything quite so viscerally, and it sent a quiet chill running up your spine.
“ Ace, I-”
“ Don’t go now” he whined and crashed into your chest, ear against your beating heart, and you trembled at the idea that he could hear how loud and fast it was going for him.
“ It’s just-” words failed you when you needed them most, because having him pressed like that against you felt too good to deny, and yet the silent twitching of his erection compelled you to insist “ Whatever this is, we shouldn’t let it ruin a friendship”
He stayed silent for a while then, giving you plenty of time to relax as he dragged hot heavy breaths on your skin.
“ You’ve caved easily” he casually considered after a while.
You frowned at those words, not quite catching onto the hidden meaning behind them.
“ Weren’t we supposed to be family just a few minutes ago?”
You sighed into the night air at that question, letting it wash over you, desperate to cool off a bit. But he was still clinging to you and burning hot at the touch. His muscles impatiently spasmed around your form, and you felt on the brink of passing out from the mere strength of his embrace.
You’ve fallen silent for too long, contemplating the realm of possible answers to give him and failing to identify the proper one. So he spoke again.
“ Don’t you want me?”
You felt his arms tighten their hold around you, along with a quiet, humid kiss press onto your chest right after his words had been imprinted on its skin, and you let a moan escape your lips in response to it.
And then there they were again, flames seeping from him to you, bleeding through your flesh and coursing down your veins, reaching the pumping of your heart and urging its fearless drumming against your ribcage, loud enough to have you gasping for air.
It was cheating—using his powers to turn you on like that. It had to be.
But it worked all the same.
You relaxed into his embrace and fell limp against his touch as a ragdoll whom he wasted no time starting to play with. Your head fell back and he caught it, combing his fingers through the soft strands of your hair and grazing his nails against your scalp. Goosebumps let loose across the whole of you, and you felt so impossibly weakened by it that you couldn’t even bring yourself to answer him.
His hand found your lower back again, it pulled you into him with renewed spirit and it had your aching, still-clothed warmth grinding shamelessly against him.
The sound he let out then had your thighs tremble. He threw his head back and you caught sight of his Adam’s apple bobbing as he choked on a weak moan. You’d never heard him groan in pleasure like that. The house you all shared was small, and he and Sabo had been forced to share a room for many years, just like you and Luffy had had to do. You doubted he’d had many occasions to tend to his needs by himself. You wondered then how many showers had ended up in hasty handjobs, how many nights had he woken up to wet boxers and sweat beading down his forehead. If only you’d been there to take care of him like you could do now…
When he asked again you were easy to crumble.
“ Do you want me?” it was whispered lowly, carefully close to your ear as his hands guided you into him again, and you felt a silent jolt of pleasure coursing through you the moment the outline of his hard-on brushed against your already throbbing clit.
You had to bite on the inside of your cheek to refrain from mewling it out, but it still came out cracked by arousal a few instants later.
“ Yes”
He wasted no more time after that. You knew how strong he was in comparison to you. He’d always been. You’d hate it with a passion while growing up. Hated how difficult you found it to match his power in a fight, how incredibly draining it proved to be to try and gain some sort of upper hand against him. You’d often sparred and ended up falling onto the ground below, your body crushed by his weight dawning down on you. You’d never imagine it could ever come in handy. And yet it did then, when his hands splayed across your ass and he flipped you over, your back landing onto the soft mattress of green beneath you, cold to the touch and so very less comfortable than his lap was.
You met his eyes and found them pitch black, lost in the haze of the moment and drunk on you just as much as you seemed to be in return.
“ I want you, too”
As if it hadn’t been clear.
He kissed you once, twice, then his hands brushed with a messy sort of impatience past your neck and collar bone, eager to palm your breasts through the fabric of your top, and you couldn’t help the arching of your back and how you keened in his ear, eliciting a light chuckle to come out of him.
“ You’re so damn sensitive” he breathed on your feverish skin, and you shied away from his gaze then.
He didn’t seem to catch onto it, and so the words lingered on your tongue but didn’t dare leave your mouth. You couldn’t have borne his teasing if he knew, and you were sure that’s what would’ve happened if you told him the truth—that you’d never had a man touch you like that before, that no one’s ever dared pry your tighs apart like he did just moments after, settling between them, looming down on you and licking his lips as if ready to consume you.
He pulled the hem of your top down and uncovered your tits to his sight, drinking in the view of them bouncing at the abrupt reveal, gently contoured by the light of the moon above. He was quick to dive down, catching one of your nipples in between sharp teeth as his hand kept kneading at your exposed flesh.
Oh, fuck.
You needed to remain as silent as you possibly could if you didn’t want to give away how inexperienced you were. But it was practically impossible. Ace’s tongue was like magma, swirling around your perked bud and turning it burning red from the attention. He pinched and squeezed as if it were a sport, and all you could do to refrain from moaning too loud was try to focus on pleasuring him in return. Your hips bucked up and into him, finding his cock as rock hard as it had been when you had been on top.
You ground into him and he shivered, ran your fingers through his hair and he grunted amid avid bites, sucking on your skin as if he hoped to leave on it the imprint of his canines.
When his hips responded to your gentle motions and crashed into yours you felt it again, his erection brushing up your clit, and with that, you couldn’t hold back from crying any longer. You wanted more, and so your hand reached for his back and urged him to repeat the motion.
When he landed back on you it was like a wave of unknown ecstatic energy flowed through you all of a sudden, knocking air out of your lungs and prompting you to spread your thighs even wider.
“ Ace” you miserably mewled.
“ Fuck- you’re so riled up” You felt his hands fumble with the fly of your shorts and peel them off you in one quick motion, and then only dimly heard him do the same with himself.
You were lost in a haze of emotions, caught up in the heat of him and the fever-inducing intensity of it all, and when he reached for your panties to move them out of the way you suddenly felt so extremely dirty for letting him. He didn’t even bother taking the piece of cloth off of you, he must’ve thought you agreeable to any sort of lascivious behavior whatsoever by then. And you couldn’t find it in your heart to blame him—you were nothing more than putty in his hands already.
When you felt the tip of his cock prodding at your entrance you didn’t even flinch, leaving him with nothing left to do then push into you and positively rip you apart. And yet he lingered, his breath broken by disbelief when he started running the head up and down your slick slit. You could hear the sounds your pussy was making in response— squelching, helpless little noises of how much you seemed to need him.
“ You’re dripping wet, y/n”
You whined in complaint at his stalling, trying to drag him closer with your fingers dipping in the smooth skin of his ass, tugging him down to no avail. Where the hell did he get all that fucking strength, anyway? There were days you argued he wasn’t even human.
“ Please, Ace” you mumbled shamelessly in his ear, stomping your feet on the ground in a desperate attempt at having him listen.
There was a dark fog settling in his eyes at that, as if you’d just triggered something dangerous to claw out of him and take control. And as a pleased grin split his face in two your insides churned and recoiled at the thought of being pinned down to the ground by his heavy weight, powerless in his grasp and positively drunk on the feeling of him.
“ Please?” he arched his brows and barely held back a chuckle from rumbling out of him “ Thought you were afraid of ruining a friendship… And now look at you”
You rolled your eyes and curled your toes when his dick softly pressed into you despite the teasing, your wet heat unfolding for him like a blooming rose kissed by sunlight in spring.
“ Oh, fuck” you heaved out.
The initial stretch was way more painful than you’d thought it would be, and he went lethally slow to allow you to accommodate his intrusion, at first. It gave you time to be able to feel every inch of him dragging along your walls as he pried you open beneath him. It was like being torn to pieces and recomposed with each leisured push. The more he went on, however, the more you were able to enjoy it. His hands picked up their exploration of your skin as soon as your quiet moans resumed filling the air, and his teeth sank into the flesh of your neck to stifle the sound of his own. His hunger reverberated through you like thunder on a stormy night. Loud and ineluctable.
You could feel yourself clenching around him, could feel your walls tightening around his girth the more you relaxed into the act, your juices pooling down on the grass and claiming all his fascination. He was enraptured by your response to his every move. Shivering at every touch, clamping around him with each thrust, and crying as if it were your first time.
The realization quickly summoned him out of it all for a moment.
How could he have swiped past it? How could he have forgotten to ask?
But there was no denying it. You were way too sensitive, lips parted and cheeks red from the utter magnitude of it all. It made every whimper of yours that much more precious, your glossy eyes staring up at him in adoration a sight to cherish as long as he’d draw breath. But it also urged a lurking part of him to emerge from the shadows, nestled in the most remote realms of his soul and aching to claim you for himself.
No other boy had ever had you like this, and no other boy would ever come after if he could help it.
“ Say you’re mine” it slipped out in the midst of quiet prayers of his drunken mind, and his voice was cracking with the impending need of hearing you say it.
You met his eyes and seemed almost unable to comprehend words.
That earned a smirk out of him, and it made him that much greedier as he shoved into you again.
You keened so sweetly, so perfectly bent beneath the throes of pleasure as you’d never known you could be. He would make you feel that good every day of your life, would pepper your every waking hour with ecstasy and bliss until you were exhausted and dry of anything else. He could gather you in his arms and have you surrender to the burning of his touch whenever he wanted, absolutely drowning in his love.
He was so lost in daydreams of the life he could give you that it almost took him by surprise when you answered him.
“ I’m yours, Ace”
Oh, to call you his and have you repeat it, to have you trembling and welcoming his undying devotion. It might just have been his greatest fulfillment yet.
“ I wanna mark you” it was the fleeting glimpse of a sick idea that morphed into a suggestion, and you probably shouldn’t have caved so easily to it.
But there was no helping how good it felt to feel him slapping against you, no running from the feeling of his dick hitting your cervix with every sharp meeting of hips. You would have given him the heavens had you had the keys to their portals. And so you nodded and felt his hand splay over your hip, nails digging into your flesh hard enough to draw blood.
The quiet fizzling started when his palm turned unbearably hot on you, and you smelled the smoke of burning flesh before it began to hurt. You yelped when you realized what he was doing, and yet you were frozen in place by the blinding pain coursing through you as he plied your skin to the embers of his will. But the ache soon turned into bliss when his hold on you paved the path for his pace to become brutal, punishing thrusts of his having you teetering so very impossibly close to completion that it felt like a violation to have him stop on the account of such a pallid motive.
It was all way too much. His fire, his touch, the sight of his muscles flexing to imprint the shape of his palm on you. It overwhelmed you to feel him still going on, drilling into you with renewed verve as he became fixated on the spot where he was letting his powers work their magic on your perfect trembling body. The consequences of it were just a blurred glimpse into a future you weren’t able to fathom then, and as he clashed into you to claim your lips again it all came crashing down. You started spasming around him, sucking him in and flowing in the waves of a euphoria that fervently tingled through your every nerve-ending, having them finally detonate into ecstasy.
It was as sudden as his proposal. The moment he’d felt you clamp around him he’d sensed his own orgasm approaching. He’d peeled his hand off of you and slipped out of your warmth as you still convulsed beneath him. He reached for his cock and started pumping, spilling hot white streams of his ‘cum all over your barely covered body. It landed on your tits, stained your stomach and abdomen, and left them gleaming beneath the moonlight.
“ Oh, fuck- Sorry” he blurted out then.
Sorry?
That’s one thing to say to someone you’ve just marked for life and ‘cum onto.
But despite yourself you let your head fall back onto the grass to stare at the sky, aftershocks of pleasure still running through you as they were him, and you knew because he shivered, and he never really did that anymore since he’d eaten the Devil Fruit.
“ Are you okay?” he rushed to your side and approached the scorch left behind by his hand.
You could feel the burning flesh pulsing to be cared for, but somehow you nodded back to him because you’d never felt more alive and untroubled than in that very moment. The quiet throbbing of your skin was only a vivid reminder of the pleasure you’d experienced, of how loved and complete he’d had you feel, even while impressing himself on you with such harshness.
He collapsed back onto the grass then, unsure of what to even say next.
“ You’ve marked me” you said as soon as your breathing had evened out.
“ I did” he whispered back “ I’m sorry”
“ Don’t be” You shrugged and closed your eyes, feeling the heat of him still fizzling on your side, and it sent shivers up your spine, it made you feel closer than you’d ever felt to anyone, ever. You’d never had a family, or anyone to call you theirs. But he’d begged to be able to do that. Sure, maybe marking your skin had been a reckless act, one you’d have to properly ponder the implications of in another moment, when you’re more centered and in control of your wits.
But still, it felt good to belong to someone, even if just for the span of a good fuck.
You rolled over the grass to land on top of him, and he looked at you. Pressing your palm against his chest, you felt the incessant beating of his heart thudding beneath it.
“ You meant it?” you dared ask.
“ What?”
“ Do you want me to be yours?” there’s a rare fragility straining in the tone of your voice then, one he couldn’t ignore if he tried.
“ You are mine” he pulled you closer to nuzzle his nose against yours, having you chuckle. Then his hand traced down your hip, hovering right above the freshly burned portion of it. You watched as he ghosted above the imprint, enthralled by the view like you’d never thought he could be by anything concerning you “ No one else’s hand fits in here”
And despite the dizziness slowly washing over you and the disorientation coming from the weight of what’s just unfolded, that thought alone seemed to be somewhat comforting.
You smiled and sighed a satiated sigh, suddenly feeling overcome with a warm torpor, eyelids heavy and barely keeping open.
You should resist the urge to fall asleep there this time around, on pain of having Sabo find you both naked and entangled to one another, your flesh proudly bearing the sign of Ace’s recklessness and greed. But as you felt his steady breathing fanning over your cheeks you seemed to be unable to resist from dozing off lulled by the sound of his heartbeats.