Chapter 33: Sacrilegious Salvation
The air in the Moore household tasted like chilled disapproval and overcooked pot roast.
Dinner had been a masterclass in passive aggression served on her mother’s good china. The clink of silverware was louder than any conversation. Her father had tried, asking Mark measured questions about his “business model,” which Mark answered with a polite, detailed focus that only seemed to heighten the tension. Her mother’s contributions were limited to offering more gravy or a tight-lipped, “So, Mark, your people are from Texas?” as if parsing out a geographical pedigree.
Alexis had watched him, this man who commanded stages and millions of screens, shrink into the chair, his shoulders tense under his simple black sweater. He was performing again, but this was his most difficult role: The Suitable Boyfriend. Every “yes, ma’am” and “no, sir” was a brick in a wall between his true self and their judgment.
Now, upstairs, the silence was a different animal. It was thick and hot, pulsing with everything unsaid. Alexis’s childhood room felt like a museum of a past life. The faded Naruto poster of Team 7, the Studio Ghibli DVDs, the plushie of Luffy on her bed—they watched her, a girl she used to be, who had no idea a man like Mark would one day stand here, looking out her window at the manicured lawn below.
“Your dad is actually really smart about brand partnerships,” Mark said, his back to her. His voice was quiet, drained. “He gets it more than my own agent.”
“He’s a corporate lawyer. He gets contracts.” Alexis sat on the edge of her bed, the floral quilt itchy against her palms. “My mother gets social capital. And she thinks you’re a depreciating asset.”
He turned. The soft light from her desk lamp cut across his face. He looked tired. “I am, aren’t I? In her world. This… this isn’t a world I can win in, Lex. Not with words.”
“You don’t have to win. You just have to be here. With me.”
“I feel like I’m contaminating this… this pristine history.” He gestured at the room, at the evidence of a safe, curated adolescence. “I brought the tabloids and the Twitter drama right into their dining room.”
She stood up. The frustration from the endless, polite dinner coiled in her gut, a live wire. “Fuck my pristine history,” she said, the words startling in the quiet room. “This history was a cage. ‘Be appropriate, Alexis. Be impressive, Alexis. Date a pre-med, Alexis.’” She crossed the space between them. “You know what you brought in here? You. And I chose you.”
His eyes darkened, the fatigue shifting into something else, something sharper and more desperate. He saw the defiance in her face, the anger on his behalf. He reached out, his hand cupping her jaw, his thumb stroking over her cheekbone. “They hate me,” he whispered, not with self-pity, but with a raw, astonished clarity.
“I don’t care,” she breathed, leaning into his touch.
“I do.” His other hand came up, framing her face. “Because I love you. And I want… I need them to not hate the man you love.”
The confession, uttered in this adolescent room, was more intimate than any stage. It cracked the last of her composure. She kissed him.
It wasn’t soft. It was a collision, a transfer of all the clamped-down frustration from downstairs. She pushed up on her toes, her hands fisting in his sweater, pulling him against her. He groaned into her mouth, a low, hungry sound, and his grip tightened, pulling her flush against him.
The careful performance of the evening shattered. What was left was need, pure and hot and defiant.
He walked her backwards until her shoulders hit the wall—the Strawberry Shortcake wallpaper, a relic of her seventh birthday. The cheerful, giant berries pressed into her back. His mouth left hers, trailing hot, open-mouthed kisses down her jaw, her throat. His hands went to the buttons of her demure, church-appropriate dress.
“This fucking thing,” he muttered against her skin, his fingers fumbling. “You look beautiful in it. It’s fucking killing me.”
“Then ruin it,” she said, her voice a husky command.
A button pinged off the dresser. Then another. He didn’t bother with the rest; he just shoved the fabric apart, the sound of tearing thread a violent whisper. The dress pooled at her waist, leaving her in only a simple white bra and her underwear. The cool air on her skin was a shock, followed instantly by the heat of his hands spanning her ribs, his thumbs scraping over the lace covering her nipples.
He dipped his head, taking one pebbled peak into his mouth through the lace, wetting it, biting down gently. She cried out, her head thudding back against the wall. The contrast was obscene—the childish wallpaper, the adult hunger. She tugged his sweater up, over his head, desperate to feel his skin. He obliged, tossing it onto Luffy’s watching face.
His belt buckle was next, a cold, sharp jangle. She worked the leather free, her fingers clumsy with urgency, then popped the button of his jeans, dragged the zipper down. He kicked out of his shoes, shoved his pants and boxers down in one rough movement. His cock sprang free, hard and already leaking, a stark reality against the dreamlike softness of her room.
“Turn around,” he growled.
She obeyed, facing the wall, her palms flat against the smiling strawberries. He pulled the torn dress further down, baring her hips, then hooked his fingers in the waistband of her underwear and dragged them down her thighs. The air kissed her exposed skin. She heard him spit into his palm, a wet, crude sound, and then the slick, hot pressure of his cock nudging against her entrance from behind.
He didn’t ask. She didn’t want him to. One of his hands clenched on her hip, the other braced against the wall beside her head. He pushed inside.
She gasped, a sharp intake of air forced from her lungs. He was thick, and she wasn’t fully ready, the stretch burning for a glorious, painful second before yielding. He filled her utterly, a claiming that was physical and elemental. There was no romance here, no sweet lovemaking. This was a fuck, raw and necessary, a way to silence the voices downstairs and in their own heads.
“God, you’re so fucking tight,” he breathed, his voice ragged against her ear. He pulled back slowly, then drove into her again, deeper this time.
The bedframe, an old wooden four-poster from her teen years, began to knock a soft, rhythmic protest against the wall. Thump. Thump. Thump. Each thrust was a punctuation mark. He settled into a pace, steady and deep, his balls slapping against her with each inward drive.
“Is this what you want?” he panted, his breath hot on her neck. “This, in your pretty little girl room? With your parents downstairs?”
“Yes,” she hissed, pushing back against him, taking him deeper. The friction was exquisite, a building fire in her core. “Fuck yes. Give it to me.”
He cursed, a filthy, beautiful stream of words that painted a picture of what they were doing—how wet she was, how good she felt, how he was going to come inside her and mark this room as theirs. One of his hands slid around from her hip, down through the wetness between her legs, finding her clit. He rubbed rough, tight circles as he plunged into her, the dual sensations making her legs tremble.
The pressure coiled, tight and urgent. The thump-thump-thump of the bedframe became the drumbeat of her ascent. Her bitten-off moans were swallowed by the wallpaper. Her vision swam, the cheerful strawberries blurring into a pink haze.
“Come for me, Lex,” he demanded, his fingers relentless, his thrusts becoming jagged, losing rhythm. “Come on my cock. Let them hear you.”
It wasn’t a request. It was the final rebellion. The coil snapped. Her orgasm ripped through her, a silent scream that tightened her entire body, her inner walls clenching around him in rapid, fluttering pulses. The intensity made her sag against the wall, only his grip on her hip keeping her upright.
Her climax triggered his. With a guttural groan that was half-snarl, half-prayer, he buried himself to the hilt, his body locking as he spilled into her. Hot, wet pulses filled her, a messy, intimate conclusion. They stayed like that, joined, panting, the only sounds their ragged breaths and the fading echo of the headboard against the wall.
Slowly, he softened, slipping out of her. A trickle of their mixed release traced a warm path down her inner thigh. He turned her gently, pulling her against his sweat-slick chest. They sank together onto the edge of her childhood bed, amid the scattered plushies and throw pillows.
For a long time, they just breathed. The frantic energy had bled out, leaving a heavy, sated quiet. Downstairs, a faucet ran. A distant murmur of the television news.
Mark pressed a kiss to her sweaty temple. “Well,” he murmured, his voice hoarse. “That’s one way to break in the room.”
A weak laugh bubbled out of her. She nestled closer, her ear against his chest, listening to the slowing drum of his heart. The judgment hadn’t vanished. The problem hadn’t been solved. But here, in the aftermath, tangled together on her narrow bed, they were anchored. Real. The performance was over.
She traced a finger over a faint scar on his collarbone. “They’ll expect us for breakfast,” she said, her voice small.
“I’ll wear a high neck,” he joked softly, his hand stroking her bare back.
She looked up at him, at the man who had faced down an arena of fans and her mother’s icy disdain with the same steady nerve. “I love you,” she said. It felt different saying it here, in the ruins of her past. It felt like a foundation.
He kissed her forehead, his lips lingering. “I love you, too, future Mrs. Phillips.” He said it like a vow, not a punchline. “Now let’s try to get some sleep before the next round.”
He pulled the torn dress from around her waist, found an old Howard University t-shirt in a drawer, and helped her into it. They climbed under the quilt, his body curving around hers, a fortress against the quiet house. The One Piece plushie watched from the floor, and the bedframe was silent.