Chapter 1: The Cigarette and the Towel
The room smelled like my last three mistakes—stale smoke, cheap cologne, and the bitter ghost of spilled gin. I took a long drag, watching the ember flare in the dimness. The neon sign outside buzzed, bleeding a sick pink glow through the grimy window. It pulsed over the stained mattress, the peeling wallpaper, another fucking anonymous box.
Then the bathroom door clicked open.
Steam curled out first, then her. Megumi. Just a kid wrapped in a thin towel, her dark hair plastered to her neck, dripping onto the shitty carpet. Her eyes were already red-rimmed and swimming. Fuck. Crying. Always with the crying. It usually made me want to stub my cigarette out on the nightstand and walk.
“Sukuna,” she whispered. Her voice was wrecked.
I blew smoke toward the water-stained ceiling. “The fuck are you doing, standing there like a lost puppy? Dry off. You’re getting the floor wet.”
She didn’t move. Just stood there, trembling. The towel was tucked tight under her arms, but I could see the frantic beat of her heart in her throat. Her skin was still flushed from the shower, dewy. She looked fucking breakable.
“I can’t,” she said, and a fresh tear tracked down her cheek. “I can’t just… be another one. Not after… you know.”
I did know. I remembered. The clumsy fumbling, the little gasp, the way she’d dug her nails into my back like she was drowning. A virgin. A first. Usually that came with strings, with expectations, with a bunch of sentimental bullshit I didn’t have time for.
“Christ,” I muttered, shaking my head. “You knew what this was. Don’t go putting a fairy tale on it now.”
“It’s not a fairy tale.” Her chin lifted. A stupid, fragile defiance. “It’s you. I want you. Only you.”
I laughed, a short, harsh sound. “Yeah? And what the fuck does that mean, princess? You want a souvenir t-shirt? You got the dick. That’s the prize.”
The towel dropped.
It just fell, a heap of damp terrycloth at her feet. She stood completely naked in that pulsating pink light, her body lean and toned, small perfect tits rising with her quick breaths. Water slicked her inner thighs. She was utterly exposed, and not just her skin. Every desperate, hungry hope was right there on the surface.
“I want all of it,” she said, her voice stronger now, raw. “However you want. I don’t care. My mouth. My ass. My thighs. My tits. My pussy. Here, against the wall, on the floor, in that shitty shower. Every surface in this room. I’ll take you anywhere. Any way. Just… be mine. Be my boyfriend. Please.”
She was crying in earnest now, silent tears cutting through the steam still clinging to her cheeks. But she held her ground, arms loose at her sides, offering herself. Not like a seduction. Like a sacrifice.
The cigarette froze halfway to my lips. My usual arsenal of insults dried up in my throat. Stupid slut, desperate whore, pathetic cunt—the words were there, but they wouldn’t land. They’d just bounce off this… this total surrender.
She wasn’t bargaining. She wasn’t playing a game. She was just handing me the key to every lock she had. No safety net. No pride left.
I’d had women beg for the dick before. They begged for orgasms, for attention, for a fucking cab fare home. This was different. She was begging for the right to belong to me. To be claimed. It was the most fucked-up, honest thing I’d ever seen.
I took a final drag, the smoke burning deep, and crushed the butt into a plastic cup on the nightstand. The silence stretched, filled only by the buzz of the neon and her ragged breathing.
I stood up. The tattoos on my chest and arms shifted with the movement. Her green eyes followed them, wide, hungry.
“You’re a mess,” I said, my voice lower than I intended. Not cruel. Just a fact.
“I know,” she choked out.
I closed the distance between us. The heat from her shower-damp skin hit me. She smelled like the generic hotel soap and something else, something clean and young and terrified. I cupped her jaw, my thumb brushing away a tear. Her skin was impossibly soft.
“You’re offering me your ass in a filthy room if I call you my girlfriend?” I asked, needing to hear it again, to make sure I wasn’t hallucinating from the smoke.
“Yes.”
“You’d let me fuck that innocent little mouth anytime I want?”
She nodded, a quick, jerky movement. “Yes. Anything.”
A strange feeling uncoiled in my gut. It wasn’t just lust. It was something heavier, more possessive. This beautiful, broken thing was giving me absolute dominion. And for the first time, with any of them, the idea of owning it—of owning her—didn’t feel like a chore.
My thumb traced her lower lip. “All the other girls,” I said, almost to myself. “All those thirsty, scheming bitches… they can fuck off.”
Her breath hitched. A hope so violent it was painful flashed in her eyes.
I leaned down, my lips brushing the shell of her ear, feeling her shudder. “Okay, princess.”
She whimpered.
“You win. You’re mine.” I pulled back just enough to see her face crumple, not in sadness, but in a relief so profound it looked like agony. “My messy, nervous, crying girlfriend. Now get on the bed. Your boyfriend wants to use that pretty mouth first.”
A sob broke from her, but it was fused with a wild, trembling smile. She stumbled backward toward the sagging mattress, never taking her eyes off me, as if I might vanish.
I followed, my own heart beating a strange, solid rhythm against my ribs. I lit another cigarette, the flare of the match illuminating her waiting form on the stained sheets. I took a drag.
It tasted different. Sweeter.