Chapter 18: Claiming What's His
The three days began with the sound of gravel spraying under tires. Stone watched from her bedroom window as her mother’s sedan vanished down the tree-lined drive, a sense of vertigo washing over her. The house, usually a site of suppressed currents and silent meals, now felt like a vast, charged vacuum. She stood there for a long time, listening to the new silence.
Downstairs, a cabinet door slammed. A glass clinked on granite.
She changed into a simple sundress, the cotton soft and thin, a deliberate choice. She didn’t bother with a bra. Her hair was down, a river of red over her shoulders. She descended the stairs slowly, each step echoing in the foyer.
He was in the kitchen, pouring two fingers of amber whiskey into a tumbler. He hadn’t heard her approach. He was staring out at the backyard, his shoulders a hard line under his shirt, the muscles in his forearms taut. The sight of him, alone and unguarded, sent a primal thrill through her.
“She forgot her sunglasses,” Stone said, her voice barely above a whisper.
He turned. The look in his eyes wasn’t the ruined shame from the garage. It was something darker, hotter, a banked fire now fed pure oxygen. His gaze traveled from her face down the length of the dress, lingering on the points of her nipples visible against the thin fabric, down to her bare legs.
“I know,” he said, his voice rough. “She texted. They’re in her car.”
A beat of silence stretched, thrumming with everything unsaid: the hotel wall, the taste in her mouth in the dark car, the sleeping woman in the backseat.
He took a slow sip of whiskey, his eyes never leaving hers. “Are you hungry?”
“No.”
“Thirsty?”
“For you.”
The glass in his hand came down on the counter with a sharp crack. In two strides he was on her. His hands, big and demanding, found her waist and lifted her as if she weighed nothing, placing her hard on the cold granite of the kitchen island. A bowl of fruit rattled, a banana rolling off to thump on the floor.
His mouth crashed down on hers. It wasn’t a kiss; it was a consumption. All teeth and tongue and the sharp, smoky taste of whiskey. She clawed at his back, pulling his shirt from his trousers, desperate to feel his skin. He grabbed the neckline of her sundress and tore it open. The sound of ripping cotton was obscenely loud in the quiet kitchen. Cool air hit her breasts, then the scorching heat of his hands. He palmed them, roughly, his thumbs scraping over her nipples, making her cry out into his mouth.
“Erik—” she gasped.
“Don’t,” he growled against her lips. “Not here. Not now.”
He shoved the torn dress down her arms, trapping them at her elbows, baring her to the waist. He bent his head and took one pebbled nipple into his mouth, sucking hard, biting down with just enough pain to make her back arch and a broken moan tear from her throat. His other hand pushed up the skirt of her dress, bunching it around her hips. His fingers found her underwear, a flimsy bit of lace, and tore them aside.
He didn’t tease. He didn’t prepare. One thick finger plunged into her, finding her already soaked. She was more than ready; she was dripping for him, her body humming from days of agonizing anticipation.
“Fuck,” he breathed against her breast, feeling her wetness. “You’re always so fucking ready for me.”
He unzipped his trousers, freeing himself. He was brutally hard, the head swollen and dark. He gripped his cock, stroked it once through her slickness, notching the tip at her entrance. His eyes, blazing blue and utterly feral, locked onto hers.
“This is what you wanted,” he said, a statement, not a question. “This is what you waited for. Your special fucking someone.”
He drove into her in one vicious, deep thrust.
The air left her lungs in a choked scream. She threw her head back, her vision blurring at the edges from the overwhelming, beautiful invasion. He filled her completely, stretching her, a perfect, brutal fit. He held himself there, buried to the hilt, his body trembling with the effort of control.
Then he moved.
He fucked her on the cold granite with a raw, punishing rhythm, each thrust slamming her body back against the cabinets. There was no tenderness, only a frenzied claiming. The kitchen filled with the sounds of it: their ragged pants, the wet, slapping noise of their joining, the low grunts he made with every drive of his hips. She wrapped her legs around his waist, heels digging into the small of his back, pulling him deeper, meeting him thrust for thrust.
“Yes… god, yes, right there,” she chanted, her head lolling, her nails scoring his shoulders through his shirt. “Harder. Don’t stop.”
He obeyed, his pace turning brutal, animalistic. He was chasing something, exorcising something. The pretense, the guilt, the years of looking and not touching. It all fueled the piston-like drive of his hips. She could feel the coil tightening low in her own belly, a pressure building toward a shattering release.
“Look at me,” he commanded, his voice guttural.
She forced her eyes open, meeting his fierce gaze. Sweat dripped from his temple onto her chest.
“I’m not in love with her,” he said, the words ripped out of him between thrusts. “I haven’t been for… years. It’s you. It’s always been this… this fucking sickness for you.”
The confession, uttered amid the obscene physicality, was more intimate than the act itself. It cracked her open.
“Erik…” she sobbed, her climax roaring up without warning. It detonated, wracking her body, her inner muscles clamping around him in rhythmic, milking pulses. She screamed, a raw, unfiltered sound that echoed off the stainless steel appliances.
Her orgasm triggered his. With a final, deep snarl, he buried himself to the root and came, his release hot and profuse inside her. He shook with the force of it, his forehead dropping to her shoulder, his breaths coming in ragged, damp gusts against her skin.
For a long minute, there was only the sound of their slowing heartbeats. The smell of sex and sweat and spilled whiskey hung in the air.
Slowly, carefully, he pulled out of her. A trickle of his cum leaked onto the granite. The reality of it, there in the bright, midday kitchen, was more shocking than any dark fantasy.
He helped her sit up, his hands suddenly gentle as he pulled the torn edges of her dress together, a futile gesture. She was trembling, her muscles liquid. He lifted her down from the counter, her legs buckling. He held her upright, his arms strong around her.
He didn’t look away from the mess they’d made. He looked at it, then at her. His face was a landscape of spent passion and dawning, horrific clarity.
“I just can’t hurt her,” he whispered, the words hollow. “She doesn’t deserve this.”
Stone pressed her face into his chest, inhaling the scent of sex and him and the lingering, incongruous hint of his cologne. The victory felt like ash. She had him, body and confession, and they were both more trapped than ever.
He led her silently to the master bedroom, the sanctuary of mahogany and family photos. He didn’t take her to the guest room. He laid her on the rumpled sheets of the bed he shared with her mother, the sheets that still smelled faintly of Eleanor’s perfume.
He stripped off his own clothes, then hers, and pulled her into the shower. They washed each other silently under the scalding water, his touch clinical, then lingering, then hungry again. By the time he carried her, clean and damp, back to the bed, the unspoken agreement was in place.
The house was theirs. For three days.
The phone rang later that evening. Eleanor’s name flashed on the screen. Erik picked it up, his voice warm, even, as Stone traced the lines of his abdomen with her tongue under the sheets. “Yes, darling. We’re fine. Just had a quiet dinner… Missing you too.”
He hung up, looked down at Stone, and the mask dissolved. He flipped her onto her stomach with a low growl. “Don’t make a sound,” he ordered, spreading her legs, and entered her from behind, his hand clamping over her mouth to stifle her cries as he took her again, in the heart of his marital bed, the phone still warm from his wife’s call.