Chapter 3: The Favor Returned
The campaign bus was a rolling vault of recycled air and low-grade anxiety. It hummed along the interstate at a steady sixty-five miles per hour, a cocoon of steel and desperation hurtling through the flat, monochrome landscape between rallies. Inside, the atmosphere was a bizarre hybrid of dorm room and war room. Half-eaten pizzas congealed on the laminate countertop, nestled between stacks of polling data. A junior staffer was snoring softly in a bunk, while two others played a muted game of cards near the back.
Rio watched it all from a swivel chair bolted to the floor, her chin propped on her hand. She felt the engine’s vibrations travel up through the soles of her boots, a constant, metallic purr that matched her own restless energy. For three days, they had been in transit, a traveling circus of optimism and exhaustion. For three days, she had watched Agatha.
Agatha was a fortress. She worked from a small built-in desk, her tablet glowing, her headset on, orchestrating a universe of logistics from a rolling metal box. She was polite, professional, and utterly, infuriatingly distant. The text from the night of the debate—Next time you’re returning the favor—might as well have been a hallucination. Agatha gave no sign, no flicker of recognition. She was all business, a master of compartmentalization, and it was driving Rio quietly insane.
The bus hit a pothole, a deep, jolting thunk that made everyone lurch. Agatha’s pen skidded across her notepad. She caught it, exhaled a short, sharp breath through her nose, and stood up. Without a word to anyone, she walked down the narrow aisle toward the small, enclosed bathroom at the very back of the bus.
Rio counted to ten. A slow, deliberate count. Then she uncurled from her chair.
The bathroom door had just clicked shut. Rio could see the thin strip of fluorescent light under it. She glanced around. The card players were absorbed. The staffer was still asleep. Elena was in the front lounge, on a call.
Rio reached the door. She didn’t knock. She simply pressed her palm flat against the flimsy vinyl and pushed.
The lock, a cheap, sliding bolt, gave way with a protesting groan.
Agatha was standing at the tiny sink, her hands braced on the molded plastic edge, head bowed. She whipped around, her gray eyes wide with shock that quickly hardened into fury. “What the hell—?”
Rio stepped inside, crowding her backward until the edge of the sink dug into Agatha’s lower back. She pulled the door shut behind her. The lock, bent now, wouldn’t fully catch, but it would have to do.
The space was impossibly small. The ceiling was low, the fluorescent bulb flickering with a maddening, erratic buzz. The mirror was a streaked, reflective rectangle above the sink, showing the panic and rage on Agatha’s face, and the calm, predatory focus on Rio’s. The air was thick with the scent of lemon chemical cleaner undercut by something muskier, more human.
“Get out,” Agatha hissed, her voice low, taut with the effort of keeping it quiet.
“You texted me,” Rio said, her voice a soft counterpoint to the hum of the bus engine and the rattle of the door in its frame. “You don’t get to text me that and then pretend I’m a piece of campaign furniture for three days.”
“This is not the time, Rio. Or the place.” Agatha tried to shove past her, but there was nowhere to go. Their bodies collided in the confined space—a full, furious press of heat and tension.
“It’s exactly the time,” Rio murmured, her mouth inches from Agatha’s ear. She could feel Agatha’s heartbeat thrumming against her own chest. “And it’s the perfect place. No one can hear you over the engine. No one’s going to interrupt.” Her hands came up to Agatha’s hips, holding her in place against the sink. “You said return the favor. So shut up and let me.”
Agatha’s breath hitched. The fight in her body didn’t soften, but it changed, twisting into a different kind of resistance. Her eyes, locked on Rio’s in the filthy mirror, were a storm of conflict. “We’re on a bus. With your mother. And twenty staffers.”
“I know.” Rio’s fingers went to the button of Agatha’s tailored trousers. It was stiff, resistant. She popped it open. The zipper’s sound was a tiny, metallic scream in the small space.
Agatha’s hand clamped over Rio’s, stopping her. “Don’t.”
Rio looked up from their joined hands, meeting Agatha’s gaze in the mirror again. Her own smile was all sharp edges. “That’s not what your text said. Your text said ‘next time.’ Is this not next time, Agatha? Or did you just like the idea of writing it?”
She saw the moment it broke—the tight control in Agatha’s jaw, the falter in her furious glare. A raw, hungry need surfaced, ugly and undeniable. Agatha’s hand didn’t move from Rio’s, but her grip loosened, her fingers intertwining instead of blocking.
Rio took it as the permission it was.
She yanked the zipper down. She pushed the trousers and the plain black cotton underwear beneath them past Agatha’s hips in one rough, urgent motion. The fabric caught at her thighs, a tangle around her knees. Agatha made a sound—a choked, swallowed thing—as the cool, stale air of the bathroom hit her skin.
“Up,” Rio commanded, her voice dropping to a guttural whisper. She hooked her hands under Agatha’s thighs and lifted, using the sink for leverage, hoisting her onto the narrow, cold porcelain basin. Agatha’s naked thighs splayed on either side of Rio’s shoulders, her back arched, her knuckles white where she gripped the sink’s edge.
Rio didn’t wait. She didn’t tease. She dropped to her knees on the thin, damp bathmat, the vinyl floor hard beneath her bones. The view was obscene, glorious. Agatha, exposed and vulnerable and furious, her cunt bare and glistening already under the flickering light.
Rio leaned in, inhaling her scent—musky, sharp, clean sweat and pure, unadulterated want. She didn’t touch her with her hands. She just looked, her breath hot against Agatha’s slick skin. “You’re fucking soaked,” Rio breathed, the words a dark caress. “All this time giving me the cold shoulder. And you’re dripping for it.”
“Don’t,” Agatha gasped again, but it was a plea now, not a command.
Rio’s tongue sliced through her, a long, flat stroke from her entrance to her clit.
Agatha jolted, her head thumping back against the mirror. A shudder ripped through her, violent and unchecked. Her thighs tightened around Rio’s head.
Rio did it again, slower this time, lapping at her, tasting her—salt and bitter and profoundly female. She used the flat of her tongue, then the point, circling Agatha’s clit with a relentless, wet pressure. She listened to the sounds above her: the ragged, gulping breaths, the bitten-off curses muttered to the flickering ceiling light.
“Fuck… Rio… god…”
Rio pulled back slightly, blowing cool air on the wet, swollen flesh. “Louder,” she taunted, her voice thick. “Let them hear you.”
Agatha’s hand left the sink and fisted in Rio’s hair, yanking her head back. Her eyes were wild, desperate. “Just… do it. Stop playing.”
Rio smiled, a wet, wicked curve of her lips. Then she dove back in, her mouth sealing over Agatha’s cunt. She fucked her with her tongue, deep and messy, curling it inside her before pulling back to suck hard on her clit. She used her lips, her teeth in gentle, threatening nips, the whole chaotic, wet symphony of her mouth. She could feel Agatha unraveling above her, the tension in her thighs turning to tremors, the controlled breaths fracturing into helpless, hitched moans.
Agatha was trying to stay quiet, biting down on her own knuckle. But Rio was merciless. She found a rhythm, a brutal, perfect cadence of licking and sucking that had Agatha’s hips bucking off the sink, her free hand scrambling for purchase on the slick mirror.
“I’m… I can’t…” Agatha choked out, her voice breaking.
Rio pushed two fingers inside her, deep and sudden, curling them upward. Her mouth never left Agatha’s clit, sucking hard as her fingers pumped.
That was it. The dam broke.
Agatha came with a raw, guttural cry she couldn’t possibly stifle. Her body clamped around Rio’s fingers, a series of intense, pulsing convulsions. She threw her head back, a sharp cry escaping her lips as she rode the wave, her thighs shaking violently around Rio’s ears.
Rio worked her through it, gentling her mouth but not stopping, drawing out every last shudder until Agatha finally slumped, boneless and spent, against the mirror.
For a long moment, the only sounds were the hum of the bus, the drip of the faucet, and their harsh, shared breathing. Rio slowly withdrew her fingers. She sat back on her heels, looking up at Agatha’s wrecked form on the sink. Her lips were swollen, glistening.
Agatha’s eyes fluttered open. She looked down at Rio, her gaze dazed, emptied out. Then, slowly, a different kind of awareness returned. A sharp, painful clarity.
She pushed herself upright, her movements clumsy as she pulled her underwear and trousers back up with shaking hands. She avoided Rio’s eyes in the mirror. She turned on the faucet, splashed cold water on her face, wiped her mouth with the back of her hand as if trying to erase the feeling.
Rio stood, her knees protesting. She leaned against the vibrating wall, watching her.
Agatha finally met her gaze in the streaked glass. Her face was pale, composed again, but her eyes held a shattered horror. “That,” she said, her voice hoarse and stripped, “cannot happen again.”
Rio wiped her mouth with her thumb, a slow, deliberate gesture. She tasted Agatha on her skin. “Yeah,” she said, her own voice rough. “That’s what you said last time.”
She turned before Agatha could reply, pushed the broken door open, and stepped back into the rolling reality of the campaign. The card players glanced up, then back to their game. Nothing to see. Just the candidate’s daughter, emerging from the bathroom, a strange, satisfied calm settling over her features.
Agatha remained in the bathroom for another five minutes. When she emerged, she was perfectly put together, her trousers smoothed, her face a mask of detached focus. She walked straight to her desk, put her headset on, and resumed a call about ad buys in the Midwest. Her hand, Rio noticed, did not shake.
But for the rest of the journey, Agatha never once, not for a single second, looked in Rio’s direction. The space between them hummed with a new, terrifying voltage, a live wire strung taut in the close, crowded air. The debt had been paid. The favor returned. And Rio knew, with a cold, thrilling certainty, that the accounting had only just begun.