Chapter 14: The Dinner Party Aftermath
The silence after Millie’s soft, rhythmic breathing filled the master bedroom was a heavy, expectant thing. Josh lay beside her, staring at the ceiling fan’s lazy rotation. The scent of her strawberry shampoo was familiar, a comfort he no longer deserved. The memory of the kitchen counter, of Caitlin’s triumphant gasp against his palm, played on a loop behind his eyes. Each rotation of the fan blade was a tick of a clock he couldn’t stop.
He slipped from the sheets, the cool air hitting his sweat-damp skin. He pulled on a pair of grey sweatpants, not bothering with a shirt, and padded silently out of the room. The house was dark, quiet except for the hum of the refrigerator. He went to the kitchen, poured two fingers of whiskey, and downed it, the burn doing nothing to cauterize the shame.
A floorboard creaked behind him.He turned. Caitlin stood in the doorway to the guest room, silhouetted by the weak light from a streetlamp outside the window. She was still in the red dress from the party, the fabric hugging her curves like a second skin.One strap was slipped off her shoulder.
“Can’t sleep?” she asked, her voice a low murmur in the dark.
“No.”
She didn’t move.“Me neither.”
He knew he should go back to bed. He knew it with every fiber of his unraveling morality. But his feet carried him toward her, drawn by a gravity he had willingly stepped into.She turned and disappeared into the shadowed guest room.He followed.
The room smelled of her—that expensive perfume and, underneath it, the musk of their earlier transgression. Rain began to patter softly against the window pane.She stood by the bed, facing him. Without a word, she reached behind her back for the zipper of her dress. The sound was loud in the quiet room, a metallic hiss. She pushed the dress off her shoulders; it slid down her body in a crimson pool at her feet. She stood completely naked, her skin pale in the gloom, her nipples already hardened.“You’re still thinking about it,” she stated.
“I can’t stop,” he admitted, the truth torn from him.
“Good.”
She closed the distance between them, her hands going to the waistband of his sweatpants. She pushed them down, his cock springing free, already half-hard just from her proximity. She wrapped her fingers around him, stroking him to full, rigid readiness.
“Lie down,” she commanded, a new authority in her tone.He sat on the edge of the bed, then lay back. She climbed over him, straddling his hips.She positioned herself above him, one hand guiding his cock. She sank down onto him slowly, a tight, wet, impossible heat enveloping him inch by excruciating inch. She let out a long, shuddering sigh as she took him all the way in, her inner walls fluttering in adjustment.
She began to move, a slow, deliberate roll of her hips.Her head fell back, her blonde hair brushing the small of her back. Her hands braced on his chest, her nails lightly scratching his skin. The pace was maddening, controlled, all hers.He gripped her thighs, his fingers digging into the firm muscle there.
“Fuck,” he breathed, his eyes locked on where their bodies joined, on the glistening evidence of her arousal coating him each time she rose up.
She leaned forward, her breasts hovering above his mouth.He took a nipple into his mouth, sucking hard, biting until she gasped. She increased her pace, riding him faster, the sound of their joining becoming wetter, more frantic. Her breath hitched in his ear.
“I want you to fuck me so hard I can’t walk tomorrow,” she whispered, the words hot and venomous.That did it. The coiled spring inside him snapped. He grabbed her by the waist, flipped her off him onto her stomach, and hauled her up onto her knees. He positioned himself behind her, one hand on the crest of her hip, the other guiding his cock back into her soaked, yielding entrance.He didn’t enter slowly. He slammed into her, a single, deep, brutal thrust that made her cry out into the pillow.
He set a punishing rhythm, each drive of his hips a physical echo of his self-disgust. His balls slapped against her clit with every impact.The bedframe groaned in protest against the wall. The rain fell harder now, sheeting down the window. He fucked her with a kind of detached fury, watching her ass ripple with each thrust, watching her hands clutch fistfuls of the duvet. He was carving a place for himself inside her, a place that had no right to exist.“Is this what you wanted?” he grunted, his voice strained. “You want me to ruin you?”
“Yes,” she hissed, pushing back against him.“Ruin me. Mark me.She’ll never know.”
Her words were a spur.His control shattered completely. He grabbed a fistful of her hair, not too hard, but enough to pull her head back, arching her spine.The new angle was deeper, more invasive. He hammered into her, his own climax building like a storm surge, undeniable and destructive. He felt her tighten around him, her body seizing as a silent, violent orgasm ripped through her. The convulsive clenching of her pussy was his undoing.
With a final, gut-deep groan, he buried himself to the hilt and came. It felt less like release and more like a hemorrhage, a pouring out of something vital and poisoned. He pulsed inside her, jet after jet of his cum filling her, a claiming as final as it was deceitful. He stayed there, locked in her, breathing ragged, until he softened and slipped out of her with a wet, shameful sound.
He collapsed onto the bed beside her, spent and hollow. She rolled onto her back, a satisfied, cat-like smile on her lips.One hand slid between her legs, her fingers sliding through the mess of their joining. She circled her clit, her breathing quickening again, her eyes fixed on the ceiling. In less than a minute, her body bowed off the mattress, a second, quieter climax shuddering through her. She let out a soft, breathy moan and went still.
They lay there in the dark, the only sound their breathing and the rain. The smell of sex was thick in the air, a confession the room now held.
“You should go back,” Caitlin said finally, her voice cool.“Before she wakes up.”
He got up, pulling his sweatpants back on. He felt used.Empty.He glanced back at her. She was watching him, her expression unreadable in the shadows.“Tomorrow,” she said.“Text me. We need to talk about the listing on Elm Street.The vacant one.”
It wasn’t about real estate. They both knew it.It was a calendar.A next time. He nodded, a jerky, miserable motion, and left her there in the dark.
Back in the master bedroom, he stood under a scalding shower until his skin was raw, but the smell of her, the feel of her, seemed grafted onto him.He slid back into bed beside Millie. She murmured in her sleep and turned toward him, her hand landing softly on his chest, over his heart. He lay rigid, staring into the darkness, tasting the whiskey and guilt on his tongue.
The diamond stud, now tucked into the drawer of his nightstand, felt like a bomb waiting to detonate. And Caitlin, in the next room, was the timer, ticking down to a consequence he could no longer outrun.