Chapter 10: The Muse's Return
The scent of him lingered on her skin for two days.
It was in the shower, under the expensive conditioner. It was in the fabric of her sheets, even after she changed them. It was a phantom presence, a haunting of salt and sex and crushed violets that lived in her nostrils. Chris kissed her goodnight and she tasted谎言 on her own tongue. The guilt was a cold, hard stone, but it was buried under layers of scorched earth—the residue of the explosion in the archive.
She functioned. She packed lunches, signed permission slips, listened to conference calls with half an ear. Her body moved through the motions of her life, but a crucial part of her consciousness remained in that candlelit basement, on that leather chaise, pinned beneath Damion’s weight.
On the third evening, as Chris watched a game in the den and their daughter practiced piano in the living room, Channing stood in her walk-in closet. Her fingers brushed past cashmere sweaters and linen trousers. They stopped on a garment bag she’d hidden in the very back. Inside was something she’d bought online in a dizzy, reckless moment after the first time she’d seen the sketches.
A sheer black bodysuit, lace-paneled, with a single clasp at the crotch. And a pair of thigh-high leather boots.
She didn’t allow herself to think. Thinking was the killjoy. She dressed in the dark bathroom, her reflection in the mirror a shocking cipher—a woman she’d drawn but never met. The bodysuit was a second skin, revealing every curve, the dark tips of her breasts visible through the web of lace. The boots transformed her legs into weapons.
She left a note on the kitchen island. Jasmine again. Don’t wait up. A lie so thin it was transparent. She drove, the leather squeaking against her thighs with every shift of the gear.
The neon crescent moon was a siren’s eye in the night. The rusted gate gave way with a familiar groan. The downstairs was alive tonight, a pulse of music and low conversation seeping through the floors. She bypassed it all, heading straight for the door marked ‘Electrical.’
The archive was different again. The candles were fewer, the shadows deeper. One of the antique mirrors had been angled to reflect the center of the room. Damion was waiting.
He was seated in a worn leather armchair she hadn’t seen before, a king in his underground court. A glass of amber whiskey rested in his hand, ice cubes clinking softly. He wore dark trousers and a white shirt open at the collar. He didn’t stand. He simply watched her enter, his eyes tracking her from boots to hair, a slow, comprehensive scan that felt more invasive than touch.
“You wore it,” he said. His voice was like the whiskey looked: smooth, dark, holding heat.
“You knew I would.”
A faint, acknowledging tilt of his head. He took a slow drink, then set the glass aside on the stone floor. He didn’t speak. He just spread his knees slightly and gestured with two fingers for her to come.
Her heart was a frantic drum against her ribs. The click of her boot heels on the concrete was the only sound as she crossed the room. She stopped before him, the heat from his body a palpable force. The scent of him, clean and sharp, cut through the basement’s older smells.
“Kneel.”
The command was soft. Absolute.
She lowered herself, the cool concrete biting through the leather at her knees. She settled between his spread legs, her eyes level with his belt. She kept her gaze there, on the buckle, until his finger hooked under her chin and forced it up.
“Look at me.”
His eyes were black holes, pulling her in. The intensity there was almost frightening. This wasn’t the passionate fury of the chaise. This was cold, controlled domination.
“You’ve been thinking about this,” he stated. His thumb brushed her lower lip. “Haven’t you? Driving your minivan. Folding laundry. Thinking about this mouth.”
“Yes.” The word was a scrap of sound.
“What did you think about?”
She swallowed. “This. Your cock. In my mouth.”
“Good girl.”
His other hand went to his belt. The click of the buckle releasing was deafening. The rasp of the zipper was obscene. He freed himself, and her breath hitched. He was already fully hard, thick and heavy, the head glistening with a bead of moisture in the candlelight.
He guided himself, the hot, silken tip tracing her lips. “Open.”
She obeyed, parting her lips. He pushed forward, not slowly, filling her mouth with his width. She gasped around him, her jaw straining immediately. The taste of him, clean skin and salt, flooded her senses.
“That’s it,” he murmured, his hand moving to cup the back of her head. “Take it. Get it nice and wet.”
She began to move, her tongue flattening against the pounding vein underneath. She licked from root to tip, swallowing him down before pulling back to swirl her tongue around the head. She was awkward at first, the mechanics foreign, but desperation was a good teacher. She found a rhythm, using her hand to stroke what her mouth couldn’t contain.
He let her work, his head tipping back against the chair, a low groan vibrating in his chest. “Fuck. Just like that.”
Encouraged, she took him deeper, forcing her throat to relax as the head nudged the back of her mouth. She breathed through her nose, her eyes watering. She pulled off, panting, a string of saliva connecting her lips to his shaft.
“Deep,” he ordered, his voice tight. “I want to feel your throat.”
She leaned in again, opening wider, and let him push in. This time, she didn’t fight the reflex. She surrendered to it, letting him slide deeper until her nose was buried in the coarse hair at his base. She held there, gagging softly, tears tracking down her cheeks.
“Look at me.”
She dragged her wet eyes up to his. The sight of his face, his clenched jaw, his dark eyes burning down at her as she choked on his cock, was the most devastatingly erotic thing she’d ever experienced. She was utterly debased. Utly his.
He began to move. He gripped her hair firmly, not yanking, but holding her in place as he started to fuck her face. Short, shallow thrusts at first, then deeper, more insistent. The sounds were brutal: wet, sucking noises, her choked gags, his ragged breaths.
“You love this, don’t you?” he gritted out, pistoning into her. “You love being my little filthy secret.”
She couldn’t speak. She could only moan around him, the vibration making him curse. His control was fraying. His hips snapped faster, driving his length into her throat over and over. The mirror across the room reflected the scene—her kneeling submission, his powerful thrusts, a tableau of pure, raw consumption.
“I’m gonna come,” he warned, his voice a raw scrape. “You’re gonna take it. Every drop.”
He thrust hard once, twice, three more times, seating himself to the hilt as he shuddered. With a sharp tug, he pulled himself from her mouth just as the first pulse hit.
Hot, bitter streaks landed across her lips, her chin, her cheek. She flinched but held his gaze, as commanded. He stroked himself through the last of it, his come mixing with her saliva on his hand.
Channing didn’t hesitate. She licked her swollen lips, capturing the taste of him. She swiped her chin with her fingers, then sucked them clean. She opened her mouth, showing him the empty, pink cavity, and then ran her tongue over her teeth.
A dark, satisfied smile touched his mouth. He hauled her up by her arms, her knees protesting, and crushed his mouth to hers. The kiss was brutal, claiming. She could taste herself, her own subjugation, and him—the sharp, final proof of what she had done.
When he broke the kiss, he didn’t let her go. He held her face, his thumbs wiping at a stray tear track. “The mirror,” he said, his voice back to that smooth, dangerous calm. “Look.”
He turned her to face the antique glass. In the distorted, flickering reflection, she saw a stranger. A woman with smudged makeup, glistening skin, and a raw, shattered openness in her eyes. A woman on her knees.
“That’s the truth,” Damion whispered, his lips at her ear. “That’s the sketch. Now you see her.”
Her phone, buried in her discarded purse across the room, began to vibrate. The screen lit up, casting a tiny, frantic blue square on the stone floor.
It was Jasmine. Again.
The real world wasn’t knocking. It was screaming.
Channing stared at the vibrating phone, then back at the wrecked woman in the mirror. The connection between the two felt impossible, a bridge burned to ashes. She didn’t move to answer it. She just stood there, in the boots and the bodysuit, caught between the command in Damion’s touch and the desperate summons from everything she was supposed to be.
The buzzing finally stopped. The silence it left was heavier. Damion’s hands slid from her face, down the lace of her bodysuit, coming to rest on the flare of her hips. He turned her from the mirror to face him again, his expression unreadable. “That’s the only call that matters tonight,” he said, his voice low. “The one you answered to come here.”
He guided her backward, away from the chair, toward the large, low table where the architectural sketches were still spread. With a sweep of his arm, he cleared it, sending rolls of parchment and lead weights clattering to the stone floor. The sound was violent, final. He sat on the edge of the thick, scarred wood and pulled her to stand between his knees.
His fingers found the single clasp at the apex of her thighs. The click of its release echoed. He peeled the sodden fabric aside. “You’re dripping,” he observed, his thumb stroking through her folds. “Were you this wet while you were driving here? Thinking about what I’d do to you?”
She nodded, a shudder moving through her. “Yes.”
“Tell me.”
“I thought about your hands. Your mouth.” Her words came in broken fragments. “I thought about you fucking me on this table.”
He unbuttoned his trousers, freeing himself again. He was still hard, glistening from her mouth. He guided himself to her entrance, not entering, just applying a brutal, teasing pressure. “This is what you want? This cock splitting you open on cold wood?”
“God, yes.”
“Then take it.”
He didn’t lift her. He didn’t lay her down. He kept her standing, pulling her forward roughly as he tilted his hips up. She gasped as the broad head of him stretched her, a sharp, perfect burn. She had to brace her hands on his shoulders, her leather-slick thighs trembling as she sank down, an inch at a time, onto his thick length. The fullness was devastating, a raw rearrangement of her insides that made her see white behind her eyelids.
“All of it,” he commanded, his hands vise-like on her hips. “I want to feel your cunt swallow me whole.”
She sank the final inch, a cry tearing from her throat as he seated himself fully inside her. She was impaled, stretched to a breathtaking limit. For a moment, they were still, connected, her inner muscles fluttering wildly around the invasion. He watched her face, studying every flicker of pain and pleasure.
Then his grip tightened. “Ride me,” he said, his voice a dark promise. “Show me how much you needed it.”
SHE RIDES HIM HARD.
She rose on shaky legs, the pull of him almost too much, then drove back down, taking him deep in a punishing, graceless rhythm. There was no finesse, only frantic need. The slapping sound of her flesh against his, of her body taking him, filled the archive. Each downward stroke punched the air from her lungs in a ragged grunt.
“Fuck,” he groaned, his head falling back, the cords of his neck standing out.
She fucked him with a desperate, clawing abandon, her nails digging into his shirt. The table creaked beneath them. Her world narrowed to the searing friction, the brutal stretch, the raw necessity of motion. She was animal, a thing of pure sensation, using his body to obliterate the guilt, the phone, the woman in the minivan. Sweat traced a path between her breasts, soaking the sheer lace.
“Is this what you forget?” he gritted out, his hips meeting her downward drives with upward thrusts of his own. “The piano lessons? The packed lunches? Do you feel it all fading?”
“Yes!” she cried, the word a sob.
“All you feel is this cock.”
“Yes!”
He took over then, his hands controlling her hips, setting a harder, faster pace. He slammed her down onto him, over and over, the impact jolting through her spine. The pleasure was a coiled spring, tightening to a breaking point deep in her gut. It was too much. It was everything.
“I’m gonna come,” she warned, the confession ripped from her.
“Come,” he ordered, his own breath ragged. “Squirt all over my fucking dick. Let me feel it.”
The command, the filthy permission, shattered her. Her orgasm ripped through her with violent, convulsive waves, a raw scream tearing from her throat as her cunt clamped and spasmed around him. She ground down against him, milking the sensation, her vision blurring at the edges.
He followed seconds later, a harsh groan escaping him as he shoved up into her one final, deep time. She felt the hot, internal pulse of his release, a claiming that went deeper than skin. She collapsed against his chest, spent, trembling, the scent of their sex dense and humid in the air between them.
Her phone began to vibrate again on the floor, casting its tiny, insistent light on the discarded sketches of a forgotten building. It glowed, and glowed, and then went dark.