Chapter 73: Backseat Rebound
The limo’s engine was a low, expensive purr beneath them. Outside, the Dallas skyline bled streaks of neon gold and electric blue across the tinted glass. Inside, the world had shrunk to the length of the leather seat, the chill of the champagne flute in her hand, and the solid heat of Mark’s thigh pressed against hers.
He was scrolling, his face illuminated by the ghostly glow of his phone. “Comments are still pouring in. The clip of you going off is at, like, two million views just on TikTok. It’s the ‘eloquent read’ that’s killing them.”
Alexis took a sip. The bubbles were sharp, pointless. A prop. The high from the studio, from their raw reconnection, was fading, leaving behind a familiar, brittle clarity. The kind that came after a storm, when you could see all the damage. “My mom called it a spectacle.”
“I heard,” Mark said, locking his phone and tossing it onto the seat opposite. The screen facedown. A small, deliberate act. “She’s wrong. It was a surgical strike. You exposed the blueprint. Now every other hater knows the cost.”
“The cost to me, Mark. To Ashley.” She swirled the champagne, watching the liquid climb the crystal. “That’s the part she sees. That’s the part that’s real.”
He turned to her then, his arm sliding along the back of the seat. The city lights slid across his face, highlighting the set of his jaw. “So we manage the cost. Together. Starting with Ash tomorrow. We’ll get her on a call, explain it, let her vent. Make sure she knows she’s got the coolest, baddest big sister on the planet who also happens to throw verbal knockout punches.”
A faint smile touched her lips. “You make it sound simple.”
“It’s not simple. But it’s straightforward. We deal with the real things, one at a time. The internet isn’t real. This is.” His hand came up, his thumb brushing her lower lip, wiping away a trace of champagne. The touch was electric, a direct current to the hollowness inside her.
Her gaze dropped to his mouth. The noise in her head—her mother’s disapproval, the echo of Keeana’s voice, the phantom weight of a million eyes—began to recede, replaced by a single, amplifying need. To feel something else. To be filled with something other than consequence.
She set the flute in the cupholder with a soft clink.
Without a word, she shifted, turning her body toward him. The leather sighed beneath her. She swung one leg over his hips, then the other, settling into his lap, facing him. Her knees pressed into the soft leather on either side of his thighs. The limo hit a smooth patch of road, the motion rocking her gently against him.
He looked up at her, his hands coming to rest on her waist. His eyes were dark pools in the intermittent light. “Hey.”
“Hey,” she whispered back, her fingers finding the first button of his shirt.
“Driver’s right there,” he murmured, his grip tightening slightly.
“It’s a partition. And you paid for the discretion.” She undid the button. Then another. Her palms slid over the warm planes of his chest. “I need you to be loud with me right now.”
A slow, understanding heat dawned in his expression. This wasn’t just desire. It was an exorcism. A way to shout down every other voice using the language of their own bodies.
He reached behind her, a fumbling search until he found the button. The privacy divider whirred softly, ascending another two inches, sealing them in a perfect, private capsule of dark and sound. The thumping bass from the speaker filled the space, a physical vibration in the air.
His hands slid down from her waist, over the curve of her ass, gripping hard through the fabric of her dress. He pulled her forward, grinding her against the stiff denim of his jeans, the prominent ridge of his erection. A sharp, sweet friction made her breath hitch.
“What do you need?” His voice was rough already.
“You. Now. Right here.” She leaned down, her lips finding his. The kiss was deep and searching, all tongue and teeth and shared breath. It tasted like champagne and recklessness. Her hands worked at his belt, the buckle clinking, the rasp of his zipper loud in the enclosed space.
He helped, shoving his jeans and boxers down just enough. His hands pushed her dress up around her hips, fingers hooking into the sides of her thong, pulling it down. She lifted, allowing him to strip it away, the scrap of lace disappearing into the shadowy footwell.
She positioned herself, her hand guiding him. Then she sank down, taking him inside in one slow, devastating inch.
They both went still.
A shared, gut-punched silence. Her head fell forward, her forehead resting against his. The stretch, the fullness, the shocking intimacy of it in this moving, public space was almost too much. It was a claim. A defiance.
“Look at me,” he breathed.
She opened her eyes. His were fierce, locked on hers. The neon from a passing billboard—a giant, flickering ad for a fighting game—flashed, painting his face in cyan and magenta for a second.
She began to move.
Not a frantic race, but a slow, deliberate claiming of her own. She rolled her hips, a deep, circular grind that drew a guttural sound from his throat. His hands clenched on her ass, guiding the rhythm, urging her deeper.
“That’s it,” he muttered, his gaze dropping to watch where their bodies joined, mesmerized. “Fuck. Just like that.”
The limo cornered smoothly, the centrifugal force pushing her harder onto him. She gasped, her nails biting into his shoulders through his shirt. The bass pounded, syncing with the pulse she felt hammering in her veins, in the place where he filled her.
He found her mouth again, kissing her with a messy, hungry intensity. “You’re so fucking perfect,” he said against her lips, the words swallowed by the music and her soft moans. “All of this. The way you think. The way you fight. The way you feel around me right now.”
His words unspooled something deep in her chest. They weren't about the spectacle. They were about the substance. He saw her, all of her, and he wanted it. He celebrated it.
She rode him faster, losing the deliberate control, giving in to the building pressure. The slick sounds of their coupling mixed with the soundtrack. She whispered filth into his ear, things she’d never say in the light, about how he felt, what he did to her, how she wanted to ruin him. He groaned, his head falling back against the seat, his hips pumping up to meet her downward strokes.
“I’m close,” she panted, the coil inside her winding to a breathless tightness. “Mark, I’m—”
The limo hit the pothole.
It was a deep, jarring slam of metal on asphalt. The entire vehicle lurched.
Alexis was driven down onto him with a force that was brutal and complete. She slammed onto his lap, his length buried to the hilt, a sensation so shockingly intense it tore a scream from her lungs—a raw, unfiltered sound that shattered the moody atmosphere.
The sound seemed to vibrate the glass. Up front, the driver’s posture shifted visibly.
For a frozen second, there was only the residual vibration, the thumping bass, and the sound of their ragged, startled breathing.
Then Mark’s body tightened beneath her. The shock of the impact, the violent depth, the sheer erotic surprise of it, pushed him over the edge. He cursed, a sharp, shattered word, and his hands locked onto her hips, holding her impaled as he emptied himself inside her in deep, pulsing waves.
The intensity of his finish triggered her own. Her climax ripped through her without permission, a secondary quake following the first, wracking her with tremors, milking him until he gasped her name.
They collapsed together in a heap of trembling limbs and rumpled clothes. The limo had smoothed back out, carrying them onward as if nothing had happened. The partition was still up. The music played on.
Slowly, reality seeped back in. The cool of the air conditioning on her sweaty skin. The faint, musky scent of sex now layered over the champagne and cologne. The sticky wetness between her thighs.
Mark’s chest heaved under her cheek. She could feel the wild hammering of his heart begin to slow.
A breathless laugh bubbled out of him first, a low, disbelieving rumble. “Holy shit.”
She lifted her head. His face was flushed, his hair mussed, his expression one of dazed triumph. She started laughing too, a soft, giddy sound muffled against his neck. “That was… an assist from the city of Dallas.”
“Worth the fucking property taxes,” he mumbled, his hands stroking lazy patterns on her back.
They untangled themselves slowly, tenderly. He helped her off his lap, pulling his clothes back into some order. She found her thong, stepping into it with a wobbly balance as the limo turned into their neighborhood. He used a cocktail napkin from the minibar to clean up as best he could, handing her another.
They didn’t speak. They just worked in the quiet, intimate dark, putting themselves back together as their home came into view. The silence was comfortable, satiated.
The limo glided to a stop in the driveway. The engine cut, leaving a sudden void of sound.
Mark found her hand. “You good?”
She looked at their house, dark except for the porch light. A new battleground awaited in there, in the form of a pending call to her sister. But the hollow ache was gone. Filled. For now, it was enough.
“Yeah,” she said, squeezing his fingers. “I’m good.”
The driver’s door opened. They had a minute before he’d come around.
Mark leaned in, kissing her one last time, soft and lingering. “Then let’s go inside,” he whispered. “Our world, our rules.”
She nodded, taking a deep breath, ready to face whatever came next from a place of grounded, physical truth. The city lights were behind them. The quiet house waited. And they were, unmistakably, together.
And they were, unmistakably, together.
The house swallowed them whole, its silence a stark contrast to the limo’s throbbing bass. Alexis’s heels echoed on the hardwood as she walked straight to the kitchen, her dress still slightly twisted from their frantic coupling. She poured a glass of water, the cool liquid doing nothing to wash away the lingering sensation of Mark inside her, or the sharp need to fix things with Ashley.
“You’re really doing this now?” Mark asked, leaning against the doorway. He’d already undone the rest of his shirt buttons, his chest bare in the low light from the fridge.
“The pothole cleared my head,” she said, a wry smile touching her lips. She pulled her phone out, the screen a barrage of notifications. “If I wait, I’ll overthink it. I’ll hear Mom’s voice instead of hers.”
He nodded, understanding. “Want me to listen?”
“Please.” She tapped Ashley’s contact, her thumb hovering for only a second before committing. She set the phone on the island counter, speaker on. The dial tone seemed obscenely loud in the quiet kitchen.
One ring. Two. Alexis gripped the edge of the cool quartz.
“Alexis?” Ashley’s voice was a scratchy whisper, thick with interrupted sleep. “What’s wrong? Is it Mom? Did something happen