Chapter 12: Breakfast of Champions
The dawn light was the colour of old honey, slow and thick as it spilled across the rumpled sheets. Stone swam up from a deep, troubled sleep, her body aching in places that felt new and secret. The space beside her was empty, cold. The memory of his departure was a dull weight in her chest.
Then the door clicked open.
She didn’t move, keeping her breathing even, her eyes shut to slits. Erik stood silhouetted in the doorway, already dressed in dark jeans and a henley, the grey at his temples silver in the early light. He watched her for a long minute. The house was utterly still. No coffee machine gurgling, no NPR murmuring from the kitchen. Just the distant, empty sound of a solitary bird.
He crossed the room, his footsteps silent on the rug. She felt the dip of the mattress as he sat beside her hip. His hand, warm and broad, settled on her bare thigh exposed by the twisted comforter. His touch was electric, contradicting the chill of his exit hours before.
“I know you’re awake,” he said, his voice a low rasp, unused since last night.
She opened her eyes. He looked ravaged, handsome in a rough, undone way. The clean lines of his face were etched with a tension that hadn’t been there before the garage, before her bed.
“Eleanor left at six for her conference in Albany,” he said, his thumb making slow circles on her inner thigh. “She’ll be gone until Sunday.”
The information hung between them, a key turning in a lock.
His hand moved upward, pushing the sheet and comforter down her body. She wore only an old, thin t-shirt, the hem riding high. He didn’t ask. He hooked his hands under her knees and gently, firmly, spread her legs apart. The morning air was cool on her exposed skin. She was swollen, tender, the aftermath of their last two encounters a faint, persistent throb.
“Erik—” she started, a thread of uncertainty in her voice.
“Shhh.” He leaned down, his gaze locked on hers, and then he lowered his mouth to her.
There was no preamble, no soft kisses. His tongue speared her in one long, wet lick, from her opening to her clit. She jerked, a gasp tearing from her throat. He groaned against her, the vibration shooting straight to her core. His stubble was a delicious, abrasive scratch on her soft inner thighs as he settled in, his hands holding her open for his mouth.
He ate her with a focused, desperate hunger. His tongue fucked into her, shallow and quick, then lapped broad strokes, gathering her wetness. He sucked her clit into his mouth, his teeth applying the faintest, most dangerous pressure before soothing it with his tongue. It was obscene, the wet, messy sounds he made, the way his shoulders strained against his shirt.
“Fuck, you’re still so sweet,” he muttered, pulling back just enough to speak, his lips glistening. “Taste like me and you mixed together. Like mine.”
Then his fingers were there, two of them, thick and insistent, pressing inside her alongside his tongue. She was tight, sensitive, and the dual invasion made her back arch off the bed. He curled his fingers, searching, and found the spot that made her vision blur. He pumped them, deep and relentless, his mouth never leaving her clit.
“You came on my cock last night saying you loved me,” he said, the words muffled against her flesh. He was talking to her pussy, confessing to it. “You put that inside my head. Now it’s all I can think about. This perfect, tight cunt telling me it loves me while it milks me dry.”
His crude words, paired with the exquisite torture of his mouth, shattered her. An orgasm ripped through her, sudden and violent, convulsing around his fingers. She cried out, her hands fisting in his hair, holding him to her as she pulsed against his tongue.
He rode it out, gentling his mouth but not stopping, until the last tremor subsided. Then he straightened up, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. His eyes were dark, predatory. He unfastened his jeans, freeing his erection, which was already flushed and leaking. He wasn’t asking. He was taking.
He moved over her, pushing her t-shirt up to her neck, baring her breasts. He took a nipple into his mouth, biting down just shy of pain as he guided his cock to her entrance. He pushed in with one long, devastating stroke, seating himself to the hilt in her still-clenching warmth.
They both went still, breathing harshly. He was so deep she felt him in her throat.
“Morning, babygirl,” he growled, the endearment a dark parody of tenderness.
He began to move, and it was nothing like the night before. This was raw, punitive, claiming. Each thrust was a declaration of ownership, a retaliation for her ‘I love you.’ The bed slammed against the wall in a steady, threatening rhythm. He fucked her with a focused intensity, his eyes on hers, watching her break.
“You want love?” he gritted out, his hips pistoning. “This is what you get. You get me, fucking you in your childhood bed while your mother’s car drives further away. You get my guilt. You get my fucking sickness. That’s your love.”
She wrapped her legs around him, meeting every jarring thrust. It hurt in the best way, a full, stretching, overwhelming ache. “Yes,” she panted. “All of it. I want it. I want your sickness.”
He swore, a filthy, beautiful word, and changed the angle, hammering into her. The pleasure built again, coiling tight and hot low in her belly. She could feel the slap of their bodies, the sweat slick between them, the roar of her own blood in her ears.
“Tell me,” he demanded, his pace becoming erratic, frantic. “Tell me who you belong to.”
“You,” she sobbed, the orgasm building, a tidal wave. “Daddy, you.”
“Goddamn right.” With a final, brutal thrust, he came, a hoarse shout torn from him as he emptied himself inside her. The hot pulse of it triggered her own climax, a second, deeper one that felt like being unmade. She clenched around him, shaking, seeing stars.
He collapsed on top of her, his weight a crushing, wonderful anchor. They were both slick with sweat, breathing in ragged, torn gasps. The room smelled of sex and lavender and them.
Long minutes passed. The sun climbed higher.
He finally rolled off, lying beside her, staring at the ceiling. The silence stretched, different now. Charged, but not hostile.
“I have to work at the site today,” he said, his voice flat. “I’ll be back by six.”
He stood, fastening his jeans, tucking in his shirt. He looked like he was preparing his armor to face the world. At the door, he paused.
“Don’t… be on that app,” he said, not looking at her.
Then he was gone.
Stone lay in the wreckage of her bed, his come leaking between her thighs, the taste of him still on her own lips from where she’d kissed him. The house was empty. Truly empty. For the first time.
She got up, her legs wobbly. She walked to the window and watched his black SUV back out of the driveway. He didn’t look up.
She showered, the water scalding. She dressed. She wandered the silent house, a ghost in her own life. In the kitchen, she saw the note in Eleanor’s flowing script on the counter: Back Sunday! Left lasagna in freezer. Love you both! xo Mom
Stone picked up the pen lying beside the note. She stared at the cheerful message. Then, slowly, she drew a single, dark line through the word both. She stared at the defaced note for a long time, her heart a cold, hard stone in her chest.
The doorbell rang.
She jumped, her pulse spiking. For a wild, insane second, she thought it was him, returned. She smoothed her shirt, walked to the front door, and opened it.
A delivery man stood there, holding a clipboard and a long, white cardboard box tied with a red ribbon.
“Flowers for Stone,” he said, smiling.
She took them, numb, and closed the door. She laid the box on the hall table and untied the ribbon. Lilies. Star-gazer lilies, her mother’s favorite. The scent was overpowering, cloying. The little card was in Eleanor’s handwriting, not his. Thinking of you! Miss you already! Love, Mom.
Stone lifted the bouquet from the box. Beneath the green tissue paper, nestled among the stems, was a smaller, plain white envelope. Her name was written on it in a handwriting she knew intimately—strong, architectural, decisive.
Her fingers trembled as she opened it.
The card inside was blank except for eight words, inked in the same dark pen he used for his blueprints.
I cannot fix this. But I cannot stop.