Chapter 39: Milking His Property
The slammed door’s echo took a long time to fade. It seeped into the walls, into the cold table beneath Stone’s cheek. She didn’t move. The chill of the wood seeped into her bones, a counterpoint to the warm, wet mess between her thighs.
Erik’s footsteps were measured. He walked to the bar, the clink of glass loud in the silence. She heard the quiet glug of bourbon. He didn’t offer her any.
He returned, standing over her. He placed the cool, heavy-bottomed glass on the small of her back. She flinched at the touch. He left it there, a weight. He picked up the divorce papers, now slightly crumpled, smudged maybe by the sweat from his hand. He flipped through them, the sound dry and final.
“The restraining order is frivolous. It won’t stand.” His voice was clinical, detached. The architect assessing a structural flaw. “But the dissolution will be messy. She’ll go for financial evisceration. And she’ll use you. As the reason.”
Stone finally pushed herself up, wincing. Her body felt used, sore in a deep, satisfying way that now curdled with something sicker. She took the glass from her back, sat up on the edge of the table, and took a burning swallow. The liquor did nothing to warm the cold hollow in her chest.
“She saw,” Stone whispered.
“She was meant to see.” He didn’t look at her. He was staring at the city lights, his profile cut from stone. “It ends the negotiation. It makes it real.”
“It was already real.”
“Not to her.” He finally turned. His eyes were empty. The feral hunger from minutes before was gone, banked into cold ash. “Now it is. Now there’s no path back. For anyone.”
He took the glass from her hand, finished the bourbon, and walked away, toward the bedroom. “Clean yourself up,” he said, not looking back.
She slept fitfully, haunted by the image of her mother’s face. She dreamed of falling from the balcony, but Erik didn’t catch her. He watched from inside, his expression unchanged.
She woke in the dark, hours later, to the bed dipping. The digital clock read 3:17 AM. Erik’s scent—bourbon and clean sweat—enveloped her. His hands were on her before she was fully conscious, rough and claiming.
He flipped her onto her back. The moonlight through the windows silvered his shoulders. He didn’t speak. He shoved the strap of her camisole down, and his mouth descended on her breast, already swollen and sensitive from the pregnancy. He sealed his lips around her nipple and sucked, hard.
A sharp gasp tore from her. It was pain and shock and a jolt of pure, electrifying pleasure. Her back arched off the mattress.
“Fuck,” he groaned against her skin, his voice thick with sleep and desire. “Babygirl, you taste even better than I dreamed.”
He’d never called her that before. The childish endearment, twisted in his deep, hungry voice, sent a spiral of heat directly to her core. His tongue worked her nipple, teasing the tip, then sucking deeply as if drawing the very life from her. A thin, white droplet beaded and leaked onto his lower lip. He licked it away, a low rumble in his chest.
Her other breast, neglected, ached. A faint, damp patch of milk darkened the thin cotton over it. She was leaking for him. The reality of it—animal, profound—unlocked a deep, shameful thrill.
His free hand shoved between her thighs, rucking up her silk shorts. His fingers found her slit, already slick. He didn’t tease. Two fingers drove into her cunt in one brutal, knowing thrust.
“Oh, God!” she cried out, her hips jerking. She was so sensitive, so wet for him, even after everything.
“Always this fucking wet,” he muttered, his fingers curling inside her, scissoring, stretching her. “Even in your sleep. Even after I just emptied myself in you. This cunt was made for me.”
He sucked harder on her breast, a rhythmic, pulling pressure that seemed connected by a live wire to the fingers pistoning inside her. Pleasure coiled, tight and desperate. She could smell herself, the musky scent of her arousal mixing with the clean linen and his cologne.
“Please,” she begged, not knowing what she was asking for.
He understood. He released her breast with a wet pop, her nipple red and throbbing. He moved over her, his knees pushing her legs wider. He didn’t undress. He just opened his fly, freeing his cock. It was thick, rigid, the head dark and gleaming in the low light. He pressed it against her soaked opening.
He looked down at her, his face shadowed. “Tell me what you are.”
She was panting, her body thrumming. “Yours.”
“What else?”
“Your babygirl.” The words felt filthy, perfect.
“And this?” He pushed forward, just an inch, a stretching, exquisite burn.
“Your cunt,” she gasped. “It’s your cunt, Daddy.”
He slammed the rest of the way home.
The force stole her breath. He filled her completely, a crushing, perfect fullness. He set a brutal, possessive pace from the first stroke, each drive hammering into the deepest part of her. The bedframe knocked against the wall with a dull, rhythmic thud.
He clutched her hip, his other hand fisting in her hair, holding her head still, forcing her to look at him. His composure was gone. This was not the cold performance for Eleanor. This was raw, unfiltered need.
“Mine,” he grunted, the word a punch of air with each thrust. “This tight… fucking… pussy. This womb. All of it. Mine.”
She was unravelling, the pleasure a tsunami building from where he stretched her, from the grinding pressure on her clit. She came suddenly, a violent, crashing wave that clenched around him, milking his cock with frantic pulses. She screamed, the sound muffled by his shoulder as he pulled her against him.
Her orgasm triggered his. With a final, deep plunge, he buried himself to the hilt and held there. A hot, guttural groan ripped from his throat. She felt the hot pulses of his release flooding her, marking her insides again. He shuddered through it, his body collapsing onto her, heavy and spent.
For minutes, the only sounds were their ragged breaths and the distant whir of the HVAC. He was still inside her, softening. The smell of sex was overwhelming.
He shifted, pulling out. A warm trickle followed. He rolled onto his back beside her, staring at the ceiling. The intimacy of the act was somehow more profound than the one on the dining table. This was private. This was hunger, not theater.
“She called today,” he said, his voice quiet in the dark. “My lawyer. Eleanor is claiming undue influence. Mental incapacity. That you’re a disturbed young woman I’ve manipulated since you were a teenager.”
Stone’s blood ran cold. The afterglow evaporated. “That’s not true.”
“It doesn’t have to be true. It just has to be plausible. A story a judge might believe.” He turned his head on the pillow to look at her. “We need a better story.”
“What story?”
“The only one that matters.” He reached over, his fingers tracing the curve of her belly, over the swell where his child grew. “Love.”
She laughed, a short, brittle sound. “Is that what this is?”
He didn’t answer. His hand stilled, protective, possessive. “We’ll have to sell it. To everyone. The lawyers. The judge. The few friends I have left. The world.” He paused. “Starting with you.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means you look at me like you did when you were eighteen and I caught you staring. Not like I’m a bomb you’re afraid will go off.” He finally moved, getting out of bed. He walked naked to the bathroom, leaving the door open. The sickly amber light of the single bulb flickered on.
She heard the shower start. Steam began to curl out into the bedroom, a grey ghost.
Stone lay in the damp sheets, feeling his come leak onto her thighs. Love. The word echoed in the hollow space he’d left behind. She thought of his mouth on her breast, his words in her ear, the terrifying emptiness in his eyes after her mother left.
He needed a story. A performance. A design.
She placed a hand on her stomach. A tiny, fluttering kick answered—the first she’d ever felt. A life, inside the story.
She got up. She walked toward the steaming light.