Chapter 21: Last Taste of Sin
The first sensation was heat, a slow, wet trail blazing through the fog of sleep. Stone stirred, her limbs heavy, the worn leather of the couch cool against her cheek. She was on her back, her legs splayed open. The dawn light was a pale, accusing gold through the blinds.
The heat had a source. A pressure, a thorough, lapping slickness between her thighs.
Her eyes flew open.
Erik was on his knees on the floor before the couch, his head buried between her legs. He’d pushed the rumpled blanket aside. His shoulders were tense, his hands gripping the backs of her knees, holding her open. He was licking her, cleaning her, his tongue dragging through the sticky, dried evidence of their night in her mother’s bed. It was intimate past the point of obscenity. A claiming. A penance.
“Daddy—” she gasped, her voice sleep-roughened.
He didn’t stop. His tongue pushed inside her, tasting the remnants of himself, a low groan vibrating against her tender flesh. It was filthy and reverent all at once. Her hips lifted off the couch of their own volition, a sharp sound escaping her as he found her swollen clit and sucked, hard.
“You’re a mess,” he muttered, his breath hot against her. “My mess.”
He worked her with a single-minded focus, lapping and sucking until she was squirming, her fingers tangling in his grey-streaked hair, not to pull him away but to hold him there. The orgasm that rolled through her was swift and shocking, a sudden peak that left her trembling, her juices fresh on his tongue.
Before the last tremor had faded, his hands were moving. He flipped her onto her stomach with a brutal efficiency that stole her breath. The leather was cold and smooth against her breasts. She heard the rustle of his jeans, the tear of a foil packet—a brief, pragmatic sound—then the blunt, insistent pressure of his cock against her sore entrance.
“Wait,” she breathed, but it was a plea, not a refusal.
He didn’t wait. He shoved into her with one deep, relentless thrust. The fullness was a shock, a beautiful pain. She cried out, her face pressed into the couch cushion, her fingers scrambling for purchase on the leather.
He held himself deep, not moving, letting her feel every inch. She was exquisitely tender, sensitive in a way that made her want to scream. “You feel that?” he growled, his body a heavy, hot weight on top of her. “That’s from last night. That’s me. You’ll feel it all day.”
Then he began to move. Slow, at first. Long, withdrawing strokes followed by deep, punishing re-entries. His hand fisted in her red hair, pulling her head back, arching her spine. The angle changed, hitting a place that made her see white.
“Gonna fill you one more time,” he panted against her ear, his voice ragged. “One more time before Mommy comes home. Gonna pump my cum so deep into this tight little pussy you’ll be tasting it at dinner.”
The words were crude, devastating. They ignited something feral in her. “Do it,” she choked out. “Fucking do it, Daddy. Leave it in me.”
His control snapped. The pace became brutal, a frantic, driving rhythm that shook the old couch, its springs protesting in time with her muffled cries. He fucked her like he was trying to exorcise something, or imprint himself permanently. Each slam of his hips drove her harder into the leather. The slap of skin on skin, the wet, squelching sounds of her over-used body taking him, filled the silent, sunlit room.
She came again, a sharp, internal clenching that seemed to pull the climax from him. He drove home and held, a strangled roar erupting from his chest as he emptied into the condom, his body jerking against hers with each violent pulse.
He collapsed on top of her, his sweat-slicked skin pressed to her back, his breath heaving in her ear. For a long minute, there was only the sound of their struggling lungs and the distant chirp of a bird outside.
Slowly, he softened, slipped out of her. He rolled off, coming to sit on the edge of the couch, his elbows on his knees, his head in his hands. The used condom glinted on the floor.
Stone pushed herself up, wincing at the deep, aching throb between her legs. She looked at his broad, tense back. The red scratches she’d left there last night stood out angrily.
“We have to change the sheets,” he said, his voice utterly flat. “And air out the room.”
She nodded, though he couldn’t see it. The practicalities were a cold bath. The master bedroom, their sanctuary of sin, had to be scoured of evidence. The living room couch, too.
He stood up, pulling his jeans on without looking at her. “Get in the shower. I’ll start the laundry.”
She watched him walk away, a man meticulously beginning to dismantle a crime scene. The golden light now felt harsh, illuminating the dust in the air, the emptiness of the whiskey glass on the mantel, the stark reality of what they had done.
As she stood, a warm trickle escaped down her thigh. Not his—he’d used protection this time. It was just her, her body’s raw, wet testimony. She ignored it. She walked stiffly toward the stairs, each step a reminder.
Upstairs, she passed the closed door of the master bedroom. She heard the hiss of the shower already running in the guest bath—his, not hers. She went to her own room, to her own shower.
Under the hot spray, she scrubbed her skin until it was pink. She couldn’t scrub away the feeling. The soreness. The memory of his tongue, his words, his final, desperate possession. Before Mommy comes home.
She turned off the water and stood dripping in the silence. The house was too quiet. It was the quiet of a held breath. The hum was gone. Everything was waiting.
Drying off, she caught her reflection in the steamy mirror. Her green eyes looked back, wide and unsure. The mischievous twinkle was buried under something heavier. She dressed in jeans and a simple t-shirt, armor for the day ahead.
Downstairs, the washing machine was churning. The smell of fresh coffee was sharp in the air. Erik stood at the kitchen island, showered and dressed in clean, dark jeans and a grey henley, staring at the calendar on the wall. A red circle around today’s date. Eleanor’s flight number was written neatly beside it. Arrival: 5:45 PM.
He didn’t turn around. “We need to talk about what this is,” he said to the calendar.
Stone leaned against the doorway, the cold porcelain of her coffee mug in her hands. “What is it?”
He finally looked at her. His piercing blue eyes were hollow, the guilt she’d seen flickering for days now settled into a permanent residence. “It can’t happen again.”
She held his gaze, the ghost of his weight still pressing her into the couch. “Okay,” she said.
He looked like he wanted to say more, to build a wall of words between them. But he just turned back to the calendar, his knuckles white where they gripped the counter. The machine in the laundry room thumped rhythmically, washing away the smell of sandalwood and sex.
The clock on the stove clicked over to 7:03 AM. Ten hours and forty-two minutes left.