Chapter 3: The Kitchen Counter
The sensation was obliterating. Her mouth was a hot, wet vise, her tongue pressing firmly along the underside of his cock as she took him deep, all the way to the back of her throat.Josh’s knees buckled. A strangled sound escaped him, part groan, part curse. His hands flew to her head, fingers tangling in her soft curls, not to guide her but to anchor himself against the tidal pull of pleasure.She hummed around him, the vibration traveling straight to his balls.
He couldn’t last.Not like this. Not with the image of her on her knees, lips stretched around him, green eyes gazing up with a mixture of defiance and delight burned into his brain.
“Lily… fuck, I’m gonna…” The warning was ragged, torn from a place of raw instinct.
She pulled back, her lips making a soft, wet pop as he slipped free. A string of saliva connected her lower lip to his glistening tip for a second before it broke. She smiled, slow and knowing. “Not yet, boss.”
Before he could process the denial, his hands were under her arms, hauling her up from the floor. She was light, a compact bundle of warm flesh and electric energy.He turned her, lifted her, and deposited her onto the kitchen counter. A half-empty glass of water tipped over, water spreading in a dark stain across the laminate. The pots hanging overhead clattered softly.
She leaned back on her elbows, her breasts swaying with the movement. The kitchen lamp cast her in a stark, unforgiving light, highlighting the sheen of sweat on her collarbone, the dark pink of her nipples, the flushed, glistening fullness between her legs.She spread her thighs, an unspoken invitation, a victory display.
He moved between them, his jeans and boxers bunched around his thighs. The tip of his cock, wet from her mouth, brushed against her inner thigh.She was soaked. Her heat radiated against him. He looked down, watching as he pressed the head of his cock against her slick opening.Her breath hitched.“Look at me,” she whispered.
He dragged his gaze from where their bodies were about to join, up the flat plane of her stomach, over the trembling rise of her chest, to her face. Her playfulness was gone, stripped away by the same desperate need that coiled in his gut.Her eyes were dark, wide, utterly serious.He pushed inside.
A single, slow, devastating inch.Then another. She was tight, impossibly so, a velvet clamp of heat that made his vision blur at the edges.Her mouth fell open in a silent gasp. He watched her, mesmerized, as he sank deeper, filling her by aching degrees until his pelvis was flush against hers, until he was buried to the hilt.They were joined completely. A fractured moan leaked from her lips.For a suspended moment, neither moved. The world was the low hum of the refrigerator, the ragged symphony of their breathing, the profound, shocking intimacy of being inside her. The guilt was there, a shrill alarm in the back of his mind—Ellie’s apron on the oven handle, her shy wave from the bus window—but it was drowned out by the pounding of his blood, by the feeling of her inner muscles fluttering around him.
Then he moved.He pulled back almost all the way and thrust forward again, harder. The counter rattled against the wall with the force of it.A pot lid clattered to the floor.
“Oh, god,” Lily cried out, her head falling back.It unleashed something in him. He gripped her hips, his fingers leaving pale marks on her skin, and set a ruthless pace. There was no gentle exploration, no soft grace. This was a claiming, a furious, physical answer to months of pent-up frustration and illicit fantasy.Each thrust drove a sharp, pleasurable noise from her throat. The wet, rhythmic slap of their bodies meeting filled the small kitchen, a crude, honest sound.
“Is this what you wanted?” he grunted, driving into her, watching her body jolt with the impact.“All those times you brushed against me? Leaning over with your tits in my face?”
“Yes!” she screamed, her nails digging into his forearms. “Fuck, yes, Josh! Just like that!”
He shifted his angle, plunging deeper, and her back arched clean off the counter.A guttural, broken sound was ripped from her. “Right there! Don’t fucking stop!”
He was lost in the sensation, in the sight of her coming apart beneath him.Her breasts swayed with each brutal snap of his hips. Her curls were a wild fan against the dull grey countertop. Her legs hooked around his waist, heels digging into the small of his back, pulling him deeper, demanding more. The air grew thick with the smell of sex, of their sweat, overwhelming the lingering ghosts of garlic and chili oil.
His own climax gathered, a tight, hot coil at the base of his spine. He was close, so close, the pleasure building to a critical, unbearable peak. “Lily… I can’t…”
“Come in me,” she panted, her eyes glazed but fierce, locking on his.“Do it. Fill me up.”
The command, the filthy permission, shattered his last shred of control. With a final, shuddering thrust, he buried himself deep and let go. Pleasure detonated, white-hot and all-consuming, wracking his body as he emptied into her with a raw, animal groan. He pulsed inside her, each wave milking him dry, leaving him trembling and hollowed out.
He slumped forward, bracing his hands on the counter on either side of her, his forehead dropping to her shoulder.Their breathing was the only sound, ragged and slowing.
Gradually, the world seeped back in.The hard edge of the counter digging into his thighs. The cool, sticky spill of water against his wrist.The damp heat of her skin under his cheek.
She stirred beneath him, shifting her weight.He pulled out of her slowly, a tremor running through them both. A trickle of their mixed fluids traced a path down her inner thigh.
He couldn’t look at it. He stepped back, fumbling to pull his jeans up over his hips, the task feeling alien and clumsy.The metal buckle clinked in the sudden, heavy silence.
Lily sat up slowly.She didn’t rush to cover herself. She just sat there on the counter, naked, marked, utterly unselfconscious, watching him with an expression he couldn’t quite decipher. It wasn’t triumph anymore.It was something quieter, more contemplative.
“Well,” she said finally, her voice husky but calm. “That’s one way to end a team-building night.”
The casualness of it, the immediate return to the charade of normalcy, was more jarring than anything that had just transpired. He stared at her, his mind blank, a hollow pit opening in his stomach where the heat had been.
She slid off the counter, her bare feet hitting the floor with a soft thud. She picked up her discarded shirt from the sofa but didn’t put it on. She just held it in front of her like a shield as she walked toward the bathroom.She paused at the door, looking back at him over her shoulder.
“I’m gonna grab a shower. You’ve got garlic powder in your hair, by the way.”
The bathroom door closed.The lock didn’t click this time.
Josh stood alone in the wreckage of his kitchen, the taste of her still on his lips, the scent of her all over him, the ghost of her tight heat still clinging to his skin. From the other room, he heard the shower start to run. He looked at the counter, at the watery stain, at the space where her body had been.
Outside the kitchen window, the first grey light of morning began to bleed into the dark sky.The delivery trucks for the market would start rolling in soon. Ellie would be at the unit by seven, prepping the prep station, her apron clean and neatly tied.
He walked to the sink, turned on the cold tap, and splashed water on his face. It didn’t help.