Chapter 40: Shower Possession
The shower ran for a long time after he left her in the bed. Stone finally pushed herself up, the sheets sticking to her damp skin. She followed the sound of the water and the trail of steam.
The master bathroom was a monument to Erik’s taste—cool marble, clean lines, a skylight now showing the bruised purple of pre-dawn. The air was thick with moisture and the sharp, clean scent of his soap. He stood under the rainfall showerhead, his back to her, shoulders tight, water sluicing down the defined muscles of his back and over the faint scratches her nails had left hours before.
He didn’t turn. He knew she was there. The mirror was fogged, but she could see the blur of their reflections—his solid form, her hesitant outline in the doorway.
“Get in,” he said, his voice flat, carried by the acoustics of the tile.
She let the towel fall and stepped over the lip of the shower. The water was scalding, just shy of painful. She gasped as it hit her skin, her nipples tightening instantly, the heat penetrating the deep soreness in her muscles.
He turned then. His face was impassive, but his eyes were electric, tracing the changes in her body—the fuller, heavier breasts with their darker areolas, the distinct swell of her belly, the new lushness of her hips. His gaze was a physical touch, clinical and coveting all at once.
“We have a meeting with the attorney at nine,” he said, reaching for the bar of soap. He worked it into a lather in his hands, then began washing her shoulders. His hands were firm, efficient. Not a lover’s caress. A proprietor’s maintenance. “You will be dressed appropriately. You will say nothing unless asked a direct question. You will look at me, not the floor. And when you look at me, you will smile like you mean it.”
He moved the soap down her arm, his thumb pressing into the palm of her hand. “Do you understand the assignment?”
“Yes.”
“Good.” He nudged her gently, turning her to face the wall. The tiles were cold against her front, a shock against her heated skin. He pressed close behind her, his erection, hard and insistent, digging into the small of her back. He smoothed his soapy hands over the curve of her ass, then down the backs of her thighs.
“This is the story,” he murmured, his mouth close to her ear as he bent her slightly forward, guiding her hands to brace against the glass. “We fell in love. It was unexpected. It was overwhelming. It was wrong, but it was too right to deny. We tried to fight it. We failed.” His voice was a low drone, a script he was writing on her skin. One hand came around her hip, his fingers sliding through the wet thatch of curls between her legs. He found her slit, already beginning to soften and swell under his touch. “The heart wants what it wants.”
His fingers parted her, delving inside without ceremony. She whimpered, pushing back against his hand. He was relentless, working her open, the soap making his fingers slide easier, a faint burn that mixed with the building pleasure.
“You will not flinch when I touch you in front of him. You will lean into it. You will seem grateful. Adoring.” He added a second finger, stretching her. “You are the sweet, naive girl who got caught in a grand passion. I am the weaker man who succumbed. It’s a story people understand. It’s a story that might limit the damage.”
He removed his fingers, and she felt the broad, blunt head of his cock nudge against her entrance. He didn’t push in. He just held it there, a threat and a promise.
“Do you believe the story, Stone?” he asked, his voice dropping, losing its rehearsed quality. Now it was just him, just Erik, raw and dangerous.
Before she could answer, his hand slid from her hip to her throat, his fingers pressing firmly against the sides, not cutting off air, but claiming the space. A possessor’s grip. He pushed forward, sinking into her in one slow, inexorable motion.
She cried out, the sound echoing off the tiles. He was so deep, filling the tender, sensitive space his fingers had just occupied. The heat of the water, the chill of the wall, the relentless pressure of him inside her—it overwhelmed her senses.
“I asked you a question,” he grunted, beginning to move. Short, sharp thrusts that stole her breath.
“I don’t know,” she gasped, her forehead pressed to the glass. Her breasts, heavy and sensitive, were flattened against the cold surface.
“You have to believe it.” His pace increased, each drive jarring her forward. His hand tightened minutely on her throat. “Or else this is just what she says it is. A sick fuck. A middle-aged man corrupting a child he raised.”
His words were ugly, designed to wound, to test her. She shook her head, water flying from her hair. “I’m not a child.”
“You were.” He slammed into her, a punctuating stroke that made her see stars. “You stood in this house in your graduation gown, all those years of wanting me written plain on your face, and I sent you to college hoping you’d fuck it out of your system. But you came back. With this.” His other hand splayed over her belly, holding the swell of his child as he pistoned into her. “This is on you, too. This wanting. You made this.”
It was the truth, stripped bare and brutal. She had nurtured this. She had fantasized, she had waited, she had come home ripe and willing. The guilt was a shared stain.
He was fucking her in earnest now, a hard, driving rhythm that had nothing to do with pleasure and everything to do with marking, with merging, with erasing the line between performance and reality. The slap of wet skin, their ragged breaths, the relentless spray of the shower—it was a furious, closed loop.
“Tell me you believe it,” he demanded, his voice strained.
“I believe it,” she moaned, the words torn from her.
“Say it like you mean it.”
“I love you!” The declaration was a scream, pushed out of her by the force of his thrusts. It hung in the steam, shocking them both.
He stilled for a second, buried to the hilt, his body rigid against hers. Then a shudder wracked him. His control shattered. The rhythm became chaotic, animalistic.
“Take it,” he rasped, his mouth against her shoulder. “Take Daddy’s cum deep, babygirl. Gonna knock another baby in this fertile cunt. Make the story true.”
The vulgarity, the raw claim of it, tipped her over the edge. Her orgasm ripped through her, a convulsive, blinding seizure that clenched around his driving cock. She screamed, the sound raw and endless, her nails screeching against the glass.
He followed with a guttural roar, his hips stuttering as he pumped his release into her, hot and endless, spilling into the already-occupied space. He held her there, pinned between his body and the wall, both of them shaking as the water began to run lukewarm, then cold.
Slowly, his hand loosened from her throat. He withdrew, his breathing ragged in her ear. For a long moment, there was only the sound of the dripping shower and their slowing hearts.
He turned off the water. The sudden silence was deafening.
He stepped out, grabbing a towel. He didn’t look at her as he dried himself. “We leave in an hour,” he said, his voice back to its cool, composed state. The architect, reassembled. “Wear the blue dress. It makes you look innocent.”
He left her there, shuddering in the cooling steam. She slid down the glass wall, landing in a heap on the shower floor. The water between her thighs was not just water. She touched her throat where his fingers had pressed. No bruise would form. He was too careful for that.
The story. She repeated it in her head. We fell in love. It was unexpected. It was overwhelming.
She looked at her body, at the physical evidence of their passion—the red marks from the tiles, the sensitive ache between her legs, the living proof growing in her womb.
The line was gone. She had screamed it into the steam, and it had become true. The performance was the only thing left. And she had just given the performance of her life.
She had to get up. She had to put on the blue dress. She had to smile like she meant it.
Slowly, achingly, she pushed herself to her feet.