Chapter 2: Claiming His Throat
The silence stretched, thin and brittle. Ryan lay on his back, staring at the water-stained ceiling. Channah’s breathing had evened out beside him, but he could feel the weight of her wakefulness. The city’s hum through the window was a poor substitute for words.
She moved first. Rolling onto her side, she propped her head on her hand. Her hair was a riot of red against the white pillow. She watched him, her therapist’s gaze seeing too much. “Penny for your thoughts, Professor.”
“They’re worth less than that right now,” he murmured, still avoiding her eyes.
“Regret’s an ugly color on you.”
“Not regret.” He turned to face her finally. The sheet was pooled at her waist, her breasts full and heavy in the faint light. It wasn’t regret. It was fear. The fear of having unlocked something he could never force back into its box. “That was…”
“Intense,” she finished for him. A small smile touched her lips. “It always was with us. Even in that shitty dorm room. All that youthful energy and nowhere for it to go but into each other.”
He reached out, traced a line from her shoulder to her wrist. Her skin was warm, real. “I thought about you. A lot.”
“I know.”
He blinked. “You do?”
“Your book. The subtext wasn’t that subtle, Ryan.” Her smile turned knowing, edged with a darkness that thrilled him. “All that imagery of forbidden entry, of desecration… it was a confession. I read it and I could smell us. Taste us.” Her hand slid under the sheet, found him. He was soft, spent, but her touch ignited a low ember. “I thought about you, too. Specific things.”
Her fingers began a slow, teasing stroke. He hardened under her touch, a swift and aching return. “What things?” he asked, his voice gravel.
Instead of answering, she pushed the sheet aside and slid down the bed. Her movements were deliberate, full of a confident grace. She kissed his stomach, the trail of hair leading downward. When she took him into her mouth, it was not with tentative exploration but with a hungry, claiming familiarity.
He groaned, his head pressing back into the pillow. Her mouth was hot and wicked, her tongue working the sensitive underside of his cock. She took him deep, then pulled back, swirling her tongue around the head. She looked up at him, her eyes glinting in the dark. “I thought about this,” she said, her breath warm on his wet skin. “About how you’d taste. How you’d feel, heavy on my tongue.” She swallowed him again, deeper this time, her throat relaxing to take him in.
The sight was profoundly lewd. Her distinctive bangs framed her face, her lips stretched around his girth. A string of saliva dripped onto his balls. She reached down, cupping them, rolling them gently as she sucked. “You taste like me,” she mumbled, pulling off with a wet pop. “You taste like us. Sweat and come and me.”
“Channah…” Her name was a plea.
“I thought about you fucking my ass, Ryan. For years. I’d touch myself imagining it. The burn, the stretch, the complete violation of it.” Her hand replaced her mouth, pumping him slowly. “I wanted to watch your face while you did it. I wanted to see you lose control.”
Before he could respond, she rose up, a fluid motion, and straddled his hips. But she didn’t face him. She turned her back, presenting herself to him. She looked over her shoulder, her red hair cascading down her back. “Now. Do it again. I want to see you.”
He was helpless, spellbound. He spat into his palm again, slicking himself, then guiding the head to her other hole. She was already loosened from before, but still impossibly tight. She sank down onto him, a slow, controlled descent, her eyes locked on the large mirror on the closet door opposite the bed.
He could see them both reflected. Her face, flushed and intent. His own, twisted with a feral need. Her full breasts swayed with the movement, her nipples hard. She leaned forward, bracing her hands on his thighs, and began to ride him.
It was a different kind of domination. She set the pace, rising and falling, taking him deep into that clenching, hot channel. The lewd, slick sounds filled the room. Her gaze was fixed on the mirror, on his reflection.
“Watch,” she commanded, her voice strained. “Watch your cock disappear inside me. Watch yourself fuck my ass.”
He was transfixed. The visual was devastating. The powerful flex of her thighs, the deep penetration, the raw, obscene truth of it in the cold glass. His hands found her hips, fingers digging into her soft flesh, helping her grind down onto him. His thrusts met her movements, creating a rough, driving rhythm.
“You like that?” she panted. “You like watching yourself take me there?”
“Fuck, yes,” he grunted. “It’s filthy. You’re filthy for wanting it.”
“I am,” she moaned, throwing her head back. “I’m your filthy secret. Always was.” Her pace increased, becoming more frantic, less controlled. “I’m going to come. I’m going to come on your cock in my ass.”
The vulgarity, the sheer reality of her, shattered him. He felt his orgasm coiling, a white-hot wire in his gut. “Do it,” he snarled. “Come for me. Show me.”
A sharp cry tore from her throat. He felt her inner muscles clamp around him in rapid, pulsing waves. The sight of her face contorting in ecstasy in the mirror, the feel of her milking him, dragged him over the edge. He came with a shout, pouring into her, his vision going white at the edges.
She collapsed backward onto his chest, both of them slick with sweat, breathing in ragged, broken gasps. He stayed inside her, softening, feeling the aftershocks tremble through her body.
The mirror now showed a tangled, exhausted heap. The animal heat began to recede, replaced by a profound and unsettling tenderness. He wrapped his arms around her, holding her close against him, his face buried in the riot of her hair.
Her voice was small when it came, muffled against his skin. “I have a flight tomorrow. Back to Seattle.”
The words were a bucket of ice water. The fantasy was just that—a temporary zone, outside of time. Reality had borders, and tickets, and lives lived two thousand miles apart.
He didn’t let go. “When?”
“Three PM.”
He traced a circle on her shoulder. The silence this time was different, laden with the ghosts of the last twenty-five years and the looming shadow of the next twenty-five hours. He had her now, for a handful of hours more. And the hunger, he realized with a dull ache, was not gone. It had just been fed. It would always be there.
“Then we shouldn’t waste the morning,” he finally said, his voice rough with more than exertion.