Chapter 3: Protein-Fueled Promises
The air in The Butcher’s Block was thick enough to chew. It was a mélange of seared fat, woodsmoke, and the faint, iron-rich scent of rare blood, a perfume Magnus inhaled like it was alpine air. He filled the entire leather booth, his shoulders threatening to split the stitching. The dim, amber light glinted off the massive gold chain lying in the canyon of his pectorals, a chain that seemed to have tightened since yesterday.
Across from him, Milly shifted. The bench creaked in protest. Her own considerable form was momentarily dwarfed by his sprawl. She took a sip of her water, the ice cubes clinking a nervous rhythm. The memory of the gym bench, the cold press of the metal under her belly and the overwhelming heat of him behind her, was less than twelve hours old. She could still feel the phantom ache, a deep, satisfying soreness that made crossing her legs under the table a conscious, weighted motion.
“Quit fidgeting,” Magnus rumbled, not looking up from his plate. His voice was the low grind of tectonic plates.
In his left hand, he held the 96-ounce tomahawk steak, bone and all. He hadn’t used a knife. His teeth sheared through the crusted peppercorn bark and the succulent, ruby interior with a sound like tearing canvas. He took another immense, rolling bite, his jaw working with piston-like rhythm. A rivulet of juice traced a path through the stubble on his chin.
His right hand was out of sight, below the checkered tablecloth. It was not idle. It rested on Milly’s thigh, a heavy, living weight. He wasn’t caressing. He was possessing. His broad palm, hotter than the steak plate, covered most of her upper leg. His thick fingers, which she swore had lengthened since he’d pinned her wrists in the locker room, were sunk into the yielding softness of her inner thigh. They didn’t grip, not yet. They just existed there, a constant, undeniable pressure that made the thin fabric of her dress feel like tissue paper.
“I’m not fidgeting,” she said, her voice striving for its usual bubbly light. It came out a breathy octave lower. “The benches are just… hard.”
A low chuckle vibrated through him. He dropped the clean-picked bone onto the platter with a clatter that made the cutlery jump. Around them, the usual hum of the steakhouse had dimmed to a murmur. Eyes, wide and darting, glanced their way from the smaller, normal-sized tables. A frail-looking man in a suit two booths over watched Magnus eat with a kind of horrified fascination.
Magnus ignored them all. He licked the grease from his fingers, each one as thick as a bratwurst, then let his hand settle back onto Milly’s leg. This time, his fingers did curl. Just a fraction. She felt the imprint deep into the muscle and fat, a brand in the making.
“Hard is good,” he said, leaning forward slightly. The table groaned. The scent of him—clean sweat, expensive cologne, and pure, metabolic male—washed over her. “Builds character. You were singing a different tune about ‘hard’ this morning, though. Sounded more like a hymn.”
Milly felt a flush blossom from her chest upwards. “You’re impossible.”
“I’m growing,” he corrected, his gaze dropping to his own forearm as he flexed it slowly, watching the corded slab of muscle ripple and swell beneath the skin. The sleeve of his tight black t-shirt strained audibly. “Feel it everywhere. Deeper hunger. Tighter skin.” His eyes, dark and glittering, locked onto hers. “Stronger urges.”
His fingers on her thigh squeezed, not painfully, but with a promise of effortless force. The pressure was immense, focusing a heat between her legs that throbbed in time with her heartbeat. She shifted again, and the movement caused a breathtaking jiggle that she felt reverberate through her entire body, from the swell of her hips to the deep curve of her chest. The mirror-walled gym of that morning flashed in her mind, reflecting an impossible tangle of colossal limbs and bouncing, captive flesh.
“People are staring, Magnus,” she whispered, leaning in.
“Let ‘em stare. Let ‘em see what a real man looks like. What a real woman feels like.” He leaned closer, his voice dropping to a rough whisper that skated over her skin. “Tonight, I’m not using a bench. I’m putting you on your hands and knees on that big rug in my loft. I wanna see all of that…” he paused, his gaze dragging over the dramatic shelf of her bust, the impossible cinch of her waist, the glorious, sprawling hemisphere of her hip that was currently mashed against the booth, “…all of that architecture ripple and shake. I wanna hear the slap echo off the high ceilings while you try to remember how to breathe.”
Milly’s breath hitched. Her protest died, unformed. A terrifying, thrilling wave of submission crashed through her, hot and liquid. This was what Brunhilda never understood. It wasn’t about subtlety. It was about this: the sheer, obliterating scale of him, the crude poetry of his intent, the way he turned her body from a curiosity into a conquered landscape.
Magnus saw the surrender in her eyes. He grinned, a flash of white in his dark beard. He gave her thigh one last, crushing squeeze that made her gasp softly, then finally released her to signal for the check. As he reached for his wallet, his bicep swelled, distorting the tattoo of a mammoth that seemed to be stretching, its tusks threatening to spill off the curve of the muscle.
He tossed a wad of cash onto the table, enough to cover five meals, and stood up.
The effect was instantaneous. Conversation in their vicinity ceased. His height was absurd, his width blocking the light. He seemed to fill the entire aisle. He’d grown. It wasn’t just her imagination. The rumor was a tangible truth in the way he now had to subtly duck beneath the wrought-iron chandelier he’d cleared easily last week.
He looked down at Milly, still seated, her face flushed, her lips parted. He put a hand on the table and leaned down, the world narrowing to just his grinning, predatory face.
“Come on, Miracle Milly,” he said, the nickname a taunt and an endearment. “Time for your second workout. I’m feeling a real growth spurt coming on.”
He took her hand, not to help her up, but simply to pull. She emerged from the booth, a cascade of jostling, voluptuous motion, and fell into step beside him. His palm settled on the small of her back, fingers splayed, covering the entire span and then some. As they walked out, leaving a silence thick with awe and discomfort in their wake, every person in the room knew exactly what they were seeing: a force of nature leaving with his prize, and the night, like the man, was only just getting started.
The night air outside the steakhouse was a cool slap after the meaty warmth inside. Magnus didn’t head for the valet; he guided Milly, his hand a firm bracket on her back, toward a monstrous vehicle idling at the curb. It was a custom-built SUV, its chassis lifted, its black paint swallowing the streetlights. “Fleetwood,” he grunted, as if that explained everything.
He opened the passenger door for her, a surprisingly polished gesture undermined by the leer on his face. “Up you go.” The step was high. Milly placed a hand on the seat and hoisted herself, the fabric of her dress pulling taut across the monumental swell of her rear. A soft, helpless sound escaped her as she maneuvered the sheer mass of herself into the cavernous leather interior.
Magnus watched the entire struggle, his eyes molten. “Hell of a view,” he said, his voice rough. He closed her door with a solid thunk that felt final.
Walking around the front, he seemed to vibrate with a barely contained energy, a predator moments from springing. He folded himself into the driver’s seat, the entire vehicle tilting perceptibly under his weight. The engine roared to life, a deep, bassy growl that matched his own. He pulled into traffic, one massive hand engulfing the steering wheel, the other settling on Milly’s leg again, this time on bare skin above her knee. His skin was furnace-hot.
“So,” Milly said, just to fill the space, to pretend this was normal. Her heart thrummed against her ribs. “Your place, huh?”
“Mansion,” he corrected, not looking at her. His thumb began a slow, sweeping arc on her inner thigh. “Bought it last year. Only thing with doorways I don’t gotta duck through. Ceilings are twenty feet in the gym.”
“You have a gym at home?” She knew it was a stupid question as soon as she said it.
He finally glanced over, a wolfish grin cutting through his beard. “Whole east wing. Sauna, cold plunge, the works. Rug’s in the main room, though. Bigger.” His fingers pressed in, possessive. “You’ll like it. Imported. Soft.”
They drove in silence for a while, leaving the city’s core. The neighborhoods shifted, grew more spaced, darker. Milly watched the streetlights strobe across his profile, the hard line of his jaw, the thick cord of his neck. She felt the promise in his touch, the memory of the gym bench mixing with the new threat of the rug. Her body, still tender, seemed to pulse in anticipation.
“Still sore?” he asked, as if reading the tension in her muscles.
“A little,” she admitted.
“Good.” His hand slid higher, his fingers spanning almost the entire width of her thigh. “Means you remember. This’ll make you forget.”
He turned onto a private road, guarded by a tall, wrought-iron gate. He punched a code into a remote. The gates swung open silently. The driveway was a long, winding ribbon of crushed stone, flanked by towering, ancient oaks. Then, the house appeared.
Mansion was the right word. It was a modern fortress of glass and steel and native stone, all sharp angles and soaring planes, lit with a subtle, golden glow. It looked less like a home and more like a monument. He pulled the Fleetwood into a vast garage that already housed several other equally imposing vehicles.
The engine cut, leaving a sudden, profound quiet. Inside the car, the only sounds were their breathing and the faint creak of leather as he turned toward her. His presence in the confined space was absolutely oppressive, a delicious kind of suffocation.
“Welcome home,” he said, the words a low rumble. He got out, came around, and opened her door. He didn’t offer his hand this time. He simply waited, watching her extract herself, his eyes drinking in every cumbersome, jostling movement.
She stood on the polished concrete, feeling small and hyper-real, a doll at the foot of a giant’s castle. He led her through a side door into the mansion proper.
The interior was breathtaking and eerily scaled. The foyer ceiling soared into darkness. A floating staircase of steel and reclaimed wood swept up one wall. Everything was huge, minimal, cold. Yet, it was unmistakably his. A single, discarded tank top, looking like a child’s garment, lay draped over the back of a chair that could seat three. A set of custom-made dumbbells, their polished chrome reflecting the light, sat in a corner like sculpture.
“Through here,” he said, his voice echoing slightly.
He led her past the open-concept kitchen, all granite and industrial appliances, into the main living area. The room was vast, one entire wall a sheet of glass overlooking a darkened infinity pool and the forest beyond. In the center of the room, laid out before a stone fireplace big enough to park a car in, was the rug.
It was enormous, a deep, dusky blue, and looked as soft as he’d promised. Thick-piled. A continent of fabric on the wide-plank walnut floor.
Magnus stopped at its edge. He turned to face her, blocking the view of everything else. In this space, built for him, his growth was even more apparent. He seemed to occupy all the air, all the light. He reached out and hooked a finger under the strap of her dress on her shoulder.
“This was a nice dress,” he said, his tone conversational, almost gentle. Then he pulled down, not with a rip, but with an inexorable, steady force. The fabric surrendered, sliding over the dramatic slope of her bust, catching for a moment before yielding completely, pooling at her waist. “Was.”
“Was.”
His finger remained hooked, holding the ruined strap taut against her skin. He didn’t move to undress her further, not yet. His eyes, dark and hungry, held hers, demanding she witness her own unveiling as a mere preface.
Then his hand released the fabric. It slid the rest of the way down, a whisper over her hips, before pooling in a dark circle at her feet on the hardwood. The cooler air of the vast room touched her everywhere, raising gooseflesh that traveled in waves across the landscape of her exposed skin. She stood there, monumental and vulnerable, in the center of his world.
Magnus took a single step back, his gaze a physical weight traveling from her face, down the slope of her neck, over the heavy, pendulous weight of her breasts, across the dizzying sweep of her waist, to the glorious, wide curves of her hips and thighs. He drank her in, a connoisseur of impossible proportions.
“Better,” he grunted, the sound final.
His own hands went to the hem of his tight black t-shirt. He didn’t tease it up. He simply gathered the material in his fists, the fabric screaming in protest as it stretched over the dense, round deltoids and the thick slabs of his pectorals. With a single, rolling motion, he peeled it up and over his head, his arms rising in a display that made the cavernous room feel suddenly cramped.
HE TAKES OFF HIS SHIRT AND REVEALS HIS MUSCLES. HE WANTS THEM WORSHIPED.
The shirt was discarded, a forgotten flag. What stood before her was anatomy rendered obscene. The gym lighting of the morning had been cruel, but the room’s soft, ambient glow was a collaborator, painting every ridge and valley with a loving, terrible clarity. His shoulders weren't broad; they were a geological shelf, each capped with a boulder of striated deltoid that flowed seamlessly into the terrifying cables of his trapezi. His pectorals were not muscles but fortifications, thick and firm, the deep cleft between them a shadowed ravine. A lattice of engorged veins, roads on a map of conquest, writhed across the dense surface, pulsing with a slow, hydraulic rhythm.
The defined serrations of his abdomen weren't a six-pack; they were a relief carved into stone, each ridge pronounced and deep, leading the eye down to the pronounced V of his iliac crest that framed the shocking, semi-erect thickness straining against his shorts. The air cooled the sweat-sheen on his skin, making him gleam like something newly forged.
He rolled his neck, and the twin columns of his sternocleidomastoid muscles bulged, shifting the heavy landscape of his upper body. He breathed, and his massive chest expanded, the pecs lifting, the intercostal muscles between his ribs flexing like articulated armor. He just stood there, immobile, a statue demanding devotion.
“Well?” His voice was a gravelly challenge, echoing softly off the high ceilings. “You looked all morning. Now touch.”
Milly’s breath shuddered out of her. The command, so blunt, broke her paralysis. She took a step forward, the soft wood groaning under her weight. Her own nakedness felt irrelevant now, a canvas before a masterpiece of raw, engineered power. She raised a hand, her fingers trembling slightly, and reached out.
Her fingertips first brushed the dense, warm curve of his left pectoral. The skin was surprisingly smooth, stretched taut over the impossible firmness beneath. She pushed, experimentally. It gave not at all. It was like testing granite. A low, approving rumble started in his chest, vibrating through her hand.
She flattened her palm, sliding it across the broad plane, feeling the intricate topography of separating muscle groups, the raised ridges of connective tissue. Her other hand came up, mirroring the action on his right side. Her hands, large and soft themselves, were dwarfed, barely spanning the width of one colossal pec. She traced the thick, corded vein that ran from his collarbone down towards his nipple, feeling the throb of his pulse within it, a rhythm far slower and more powerful than her own frantic beat.
“Use your hands,” he instructed, his voice thicker now. “Feel what you’re dealing with.”
She obeyed, her movements growing less timid. She kneaded the dense flesh, her fingers seeking purchase and finding none. She squeezed the round cap of his shoulder, her grip unable to encompass even half of it. She trailed her nails lightly down the deep canyon beside his latissimus dorsi, feeling the muscle jump and tighten in response. The scent of him, clean male sweat and the lingering ozone of his expensive soap, filled her senses. It was the scent from the gym, from the car, but concentrated, unavoidable.
“Good,” he breathed, his eyes heavy-lidded. “Now the arms. Don’t be shy.”
Her hands slid down the sheer cliff of his side to the monumental bulk of his bicep. Her fingers couldn't meet around it. She wrapped both hands around the shaft of it, a worshiper at an altar, and felt it swell and harden further under her touch. The vascularity was a roadmap of blue and purple beneath the skin, a network of pressurized cables. She explored the hard, horseshoe curve of his triceps, the intricate braid of his forearm muscles that twisted like steel rope down to his thick wrists.
Her earlier soreness was a distant memory, drowned in a tide of awe. This was what Brunhilda would never comprehend—not the act, but the overwhelming reality of the form. The sheer, staggering tonnage of living flesh and power that consented to be touched.
Magnus watched her face, reading the dazed reverence there. A satisfied, animal grin spread across his features. With a slow, deliberate flex, he brought his arms up into a double biceps pose. The transformation was violent. Muscles erupted into sharper definition, veins bulged like buried pipes, his shoulders flared wider, and his back thickened into a V-shape that defied physics. The sheer force of the contraction made the air seem to crackle.
Milly gasped, her hands falling away as if shocked. She took an involuntary step back, her eyes wide. He wasn't just a man. He was an event.
He held the pose, letting her absorb the full, terrifying spectacle. Then he relaxed, the mountains settling, but the threat of their return remained etched in the memory of her palms.
“See that?” he said, his voice dropping to a confidential growl as he took a single, massive step forward, closing the distance she’d created. His shadow consumed her. “That’s the growth spurt. It’s not stopping.” He took her wrist, his grip gentle but inescapable, and placed her hand back on the drum-tight sphere of his bicep. “You’re gonna feel every new inch. Starting now.”
He began leading her, backwards, toward the waiting expanse of the dusky blue rug.
His backward steps were measured, a predator herding prey to a chosen spot. The cool hardwood vanished under her heels, replaced by the rug's engulfing softness. It felt like sinking into a cloud, a stark contrast to the unyielding man pulling her down.
"Here," he said, the word final.
He didn't so much sit as collapse, a controlled avalanche of muscle that made the floor tremble. He settled at the rug's center, legs spread, an emperor on a plush throne. He pulled her between them, her knees sinking into the deep pile beside his thighs. From this vantage, he was a mountain range she had to summit. The earlier awe curdled into a sharper, more personal hunger.
"Go on," he murmured, his hands resting on his own knees. His eyes were dark pits of expectation. "Finish what you started."
Milly leaned forward, her own breath hot on her neck. The scent of him was richer now, salt and clean skin. She pressed her open mouth against the dense curve of his left pectoral. His skin was warm, slightly salty. She traced the defined ridge of his pectoral major with her tongue, a slow,敬虔な line.
A low groan vibrated through the muscle into her mouth. It spurred her on. Her kisses became less探索的, more deliberate. She dotted them along the winding path of a bulging vein, her lips soft against the coded, powerful terrain. She took the small, hardened nub of his nipple into her mouth, swirling her tongue around it, and felt the entire slab of his chest contract with a sudden, sharp intake of breath.
"Damn," he hissed, his fingers twitching on his knees.
She moved to his shoulder, kissing the dense, rounded cap of his deltoid, licking the smooth skin over the complex weave of fibers underneath. She could feel the raw power in a state of restless idle. Her hands roamed as her mouth worked, sliding over the fascinating, rough texture of his latissimus dorsi as it flared from his side. She was mapping him, learning the grammar of his construction through taste and touch.
As she lowered her head to trace the deep, separated grooves of his abdominal ridges, his patience ended.
His hands, which had been resting with deceptive calm, moved. They came up not with a grab, but with a slow, inevitable encompassment. His palms, each wider than her face, settled against the full, heavy undercurve of her breasts. The contact was electric, a jolt that straightened her spine. His touch wasn't gentle or explorative; it was a claiming weight.
He didn't squeeze. He held. His monstrous hands simply cradled the immense, soft weight, his thumbs finding her nipples and brushing over them with a shocking, casual precision. The contrast was devastating: her soft, pillowy flesh swelling against the unyielding, calloused planes of his palms. She whimpered into the hard valley between his pectorals, her earlier worships faltering.
"These," he rumbled, his voice thick. He gave a slow, testing lift, adjusting the overwhelming mass in his grasp as if judging heft. The sensation of being completely supported, completely handled, short-circuited her thoughts. "Hell of a pair, Milly. Always were. Even wobbling around on your little runs."
The mention of her running, her secret, mundane passion, spoken here while he held her like this, broke her. It was too intimate, too revealing. She buried her face against his neck, her lips finding the pounding column of his carotid artery. She kissed the frantic rhythm there, then bit down, neither gently nor hard, a primal mark of her own.
He growled, a sound that came from the soles of his feet. The hands on her breasts finally, decisively, closed.