Chapter 3: Aftermath
Damon’s breath was a hot, ragged murmur against her ear. “What the fuck was that?” he asked, the shaky laugh that followed sounding punched out of him.
Rachel’s own laughter was louder, a raw, unguarded bark that hurt her throat. “I don’t... I don't fucking know,” she admitted, the honesty leaving a metallic taste in her dry mouth.
The humid air of the room clung to their damp skin, the only sound now the distant, rhythmic thump of a bassline from another apartment.
He stayed inside her, his body giving a faint, final tremble as he winced. The last remaining shots escaped him, a warm pulse deep within her that made her breath hitch.
Rachel lay perfectly still beneath his weight, the strange, full pressure anchoring her to the messy sheets. She realized, with a clinical detachment that felt like ice water in her veins, that all of him was inside her. The bassline next door thumped on, a hollow echo of a rhythm that had completely deserted them.
He remained inside her, his arms wrapping around her torso in a loose embrace that felt oddly, deceptively protective. His lips brushed the damp skin of her neck, a soft kiss that contrasted with the earlier frenzy.
"You on the pill?" he murmured, his voice low and gravelly against her ear.
Rachel's mind flashed to the empty medicine cabinet in her sterile bathroom, the absence of any such prescription. She didn't answer, her silence thickening in the space between his question and the distant bass. "I'm good."
She lazily gamed out the contraceptive options in her head: cycle day, failure rates, the dull planned parenthood clinic on Vermont. Do they work nights?
His arm tightened around her chest, his mouth a whisper away from her ear. "Damn,” he breathed, a lazy chuckle vibrating against her neck, “with that, be a fuckin' good lookin' baby.”
She scoffed, the sound sharp and dismissive in the humid dark. "Shut the fuck up.”
He didn’t pull out, his body going still and heavy against her back, staying inside as if anchored. The city’s lights bled through the blinds, painting cold stripes over their tangled stillness. "I gotchu," he said.
He eventually pulled out, a soft, wet separation that left her feeling abruptly hollow and exposed to the cool air of the room. His fingers were already tracing a possessive path down the slope of her spine as he mapped out the next hour in his head. “Just let me catch my breath, get some water in you.”
The clinical part of her mind noted the warm, insistent trickle down her inner thigh. Rachel got up to go to the bathroom, her movements stiff as she disentangled herself from the damp sheets and his calculated touch.