Chapter 9: Vertical Descent
The applause was a dull, roaring wave from behind the heavy conference room doors. Ryan leaned against the wall, the distant sound like the echo of a world he’d never fit into. He felt hollowed out, a shell still vibrating from the force of her. The lavender-scented ghost of the women’s bathroom clung to his skin, a shameful cologne.
The doors burst open. A river of people spilled into the hallway, buzzing with post-panel energy. He saw her then, surrounded. A colleague in a tweed jacket was gesturing emphatically, another nodding along. Channah listened, a poised, attentive smile on her face. Dr. Levine. She looked untouchable.
Her eyes cut through the crowd and found his. The smile didn’t change, but something in her gaze solidified, turned into a command. She gave a slight, almost imperceptible tilt of her head toward the bank of elevators down the hall. Then she turned back to the tweed jacket, offering a practiced, thoughtful response.
Ryan pushed off the wall and moved with the current of the crowd, drifting toward the elevators. He pressed the call button. The doors to one opened immediately, an empty, mirrored chamber. He stepped in and held the door open, his arm a bar across the entrance.
He watched her disentangle herself with professional grace—a touch on the arm, a nod, a final laugh. She walked toward him, her heels clicking a steady, measured rhythm on the marble floor. She stepped into the elevator, brushing past him. He released the door.
It slid shut with a soft, final thunk.
The silence was immediate, a vacuum sealed in polished brass and wood. The elevator began its descent. They were alone, reflected into infinity in the mirrors on every side.
For a three count, nothing. She stared straight ahead at the closing doors, her posture perfect. He watched her reflection watching his.
“Well,” she said, her voice a cool, professional thing. “That was—”
He moved. It wasn’t gentle. He spun her around and pushed her forward, her palms slapping against the mirrored wall. His body crowded hers from behind, pinning her in place.
“Don’t,” he said into her ear, his voice low and rough. “Don’t give me the post-game analysis. I don’t want to hear it.”
She tried to straighten, to push back. “Ryan, for God’s sake—”
He dropped to his knees behind her. The elevator hummed, descending floor by floor. His hands went to the hem of her pencil skirt, bunching it up around her waist. Her black panties were a stark contrast against her skin. He didn’t bother pulling them down. He hooked his fingers into the waistband at her hip and, with a sharp, deliberate tug, tore the fabric sideways. A ragged sigh escaped her as the cotton gave way.
There it was. The pale curve of her ass, the shadowed cleft between. The faint, shadowy bruise he’d left on her. The other, darker place, still puffy and softened from his use. The scent of her, of them, rose from her skin, cutting through the elevator’s sterile, recycled air.
He leaned forward and dragged his tongue, flat and firm, up the entire length of her seam.
Her whole body jerked. A shocked, guttural sound was punched from her lungs. Her forehead thumped against the cool mirror. “Oh, fuck.”
He did it again, slower this time, savoring the musky, complex taste of her. His own spit, their sweat, her essential salt. He focused then on the tight, wrinkled furl of her asshole. He pressed the tip of his tongue against it, feeling it yield incrementally under the persistent pressure. He circled it, then speared inward.
She cried out, a short, sharp sound that echoed in the small space. Her hands scrambled against the mirror for purchase. He held her hips firmly, keeping her in place as he ate her ass with a ruthless, dedicated hunger. His nose was buried against her, his world reduced to this one dark, forbidden aperture. He fucked her with his tongue, shallow then deep, feeling the intimate clench and release of her around the intrusion.
“The… the camera,” she gasped, her voice strangled.
He glanced up. In the corner of the elevator ceiling, a small dome with a blinking red light watched them, unblinking. He didn’t stop. He pressed his face harder against her.
“Let them watch,” he muttered, his words muffled by her flesh. “Let them see what you really are.”
It was the cruelest thing he could have said, and the most arousing. She moaned, a long, surrendering sound, and ground herself back against his mouth. Her professional composure shattered completely. “Yes,” she hissed. “God, yes. Just like that. Your tongue… it’s so fucking dirty.”
He added a finger, slick with her wetness and his saliva, pressing it alongside his tongue. She was so open, so willing. The elevator dinged, passing a floor. Neither of them moved. He worked her with a relentless rhythm, the wet, obscene sounds loud in the quiet box.
“I can still feel you inside me from before,” she babbled, her words collapsing into panting breaths. “I walked back in there… I gave the rest of my talk… and all I could feel was your come leaking out of my ass. I had to stand there and talk about boundaries…”
He added a second finger, stretching her. She screamed, the sound ricocheting off the mirrors. Her body convulsed, a brutal, shaking orgasm that had nothing to do with her clit and everything to do with the filthy, profound violation of this act. She shook against him, her cries turning into broken sobs.
The elevator slowed. The display showed they were approaching the lobby.
He stood up quickly, his knees cracking. He turned her around. Her face was a wreck of tears and ruined makeup, her eyes wild. He fumbled with his belt, got his cock out. It was brutally hard, jutting from his open fly. He was slick at the tip from her taste.
“Suck it,” he said, his voice ragged. “Clean your own mess off me. Now.”
She didn’t hesitate. She dropped back to her knees, her torn panties a rag around her thighs, her skirt a bunched mess at her waist. She took him deep into her throat in one fluid, desperate motion. She gagged, tears streaming anew, but she pushed herself further, swallowing around him, her tongue lapping fiercely at his shaft. She was tasting herself on him, and the reality of it seemed to drive her into a frenzy. She bobbed her head, sloppy and frantic, her hands gripping his hips.
The elevator dinged. The doors began to slide open onto the grand, bustling lobby.
Ryan grabbed a fistful of her red hair and pulled her off him with a wet pop. He shoved her back against the mirrored wall, turned her roughly, and hiked her skirt up again. He positioned himself at her entrance, that same used, slippery hole.
“No,” she pleaded, but it was a plea for exactly this. “Not here, they’ll see—”
He drove into her ass in one brutal thrust. Her scream was swallowed by the noise of the lobby flooding into the elevator—the chatter, the clatter of suitcases, the distant piano music. People walked past the open doors. No one looked in. They were a blurred, frantic sculpture in the mirrors.
He fucked her hard and fast, his own climax coiling tight, spurred by the public risk, by her abject surrender, by the sheer animal wrongness of it. Each slam of his hips mashed her face against the mirror, her hot breath fogging the glass.
“Come for me again,” he grunted, his fingers digging into the soft flesh of her hips. “Come on my cock in your shithole while half of Chicago walks by.”
The words, the degrading permission, tipped her over the edge. She came with a silent, seizing shudder, her internal muscles fluttering wildly around him. It was too much. He followed, erupting deep inside her with a stifled groan, his body buckling over hers.
For a moment, there was only the sound of their ragged breathing and the lobby’s oblivious hum.
The doors began to close, having stayed open their allotted time. As they slid shut, cutting them off from the world once more, Ryan pulled out. He tucked himself away, fumbling with his belt.
Channah slid down the mirrored wall to the floor, a heap of torn clothing and shuddering flesh. She looked up at him, her expression utterly shattered, utterly complete.
The elevator continued its descent, now heading to the parking garage. Silence reigned, thick and profound.
She reached out a trembling hand and wiped a smear of lipstick from his softening cock before he zipped up. She looked at the crimson stain on her thumb, then slowly, deliberately, sucked it clean.
“My hotel room,” she said, her voice hoarse. “Now. I’m not done.”