Chapter 9: The last bucket
The silence after Christophe left had been a living thing. It stretched and pulsed in the too-bright apartment, full of the ghosts of screams and the sour smell of sex. They had slept so more, eventually, a dead and dreamless sleep tangled in damp sheets. When Julie woke, the flat grey light of a Parisian afternoon was bleeding through the windows, illuminating the dust motes and the wreckage of the night before. Empty bottles.A forgotten shoe. The lingering humidity from the shower. She took a sick day off work.
Mark was already awake, leaning against the kitchen counter, drinking a glass of water. He watched her as she walked naked into the kitchen, her body a map of the previous hours—red marks, faint bruises, the imprint of his teeth on her shoulder. She didn’t cover herself. There was no point.
“Coffee?” he asked, his voice hoarse.
She shook her head.
“There's one more thing on my bucket list" She said. "How's yours going?”
"I'm done" he said, looking tired.
She opened a high cabinet, reached past neat stacks of white plates, and pulled out a sleek black box. She set it on the cold marble island with a definitive click.
Mark’s eyes followed her hands as she opened the box. Nestled inside black foam was a harness of black leather and polished steel. And beside it, a dildo, pale and curving, a sinister shade of flesh-tone.
“What’s this?” he asked, though his expression said he understood perfectly.
"This, is how I complete sex"
She began to strap the harness around her hips, the buckles loud in the quiet. "I got the idea in Amsterdam. Do you remember her?"
He did. Vividly.
“That's not going near me” he said as he set his glass down.
“It's not so long, not as big as you. If I can take you, you can take it.” She secured the last strap, the weight of the silicone appendage hanging heavy and alien between her legs. She turned to face him fully. “You came here and tore my life apart. You used me to exorcise whatever ghost you brought with you. You fucked me over. Now I’m going to fuck you with it.”
A slow, dark smile touched his lips. Not the triumphant grin from the shower, but something quieter, more profound. A recognition. “Okay.”
“Bend over the island.”
He moved without hesitation, turning his back to her, leaning forward until his torso was flat against the cold marble. The city sprawled, indifferent, below them. He reached back and spread his cheeks for her, an obscene and vulnerable offering.
Julie’s hands were steady. She took a bottle of oil from a drawer, poured a slick, glistening pool between his buttocks. She worked it into him with two fingers, methodical, clinical. He grunted, his forehead pressing against the stone.
Her phone, discarded on a nearby stool, began to vibrate. The screen lit up with a photo of Christophe, smiling, from a weekend in Normandy. The buzz was an angry insect on the marble.
Julie ignored it. She positioned the head of the strap-on against him, applying steady, inexorable pressure. “This what you wanted?” she breathed, her voice a low whisper near his ear.
He didn't reply. He didn't stop her either.
She pushed. The silicone slid past the tight ring of muscle, invading him inch by thick, unyielding inch. Mark gasped, a sharp, punched-out sound, his knuckles whitening where they gripped the edge of the counter. The phone buzzed again, skittering slightly.
Julie began to move. Short, testing thrusts at first, then longer, deeper strokes. The sound was lewd, a wet, rhythmic slap of her body against his, the creak of the leather harness. Each thrust pushed him harder into the cold island.
The phone vibrated a third time. Christophe’s face flashed again and again, a persistent, pleading ghost.
“He keeps calling,” Mark groaned, his voice strained.
“Let him.” Julie’s thrusts became harder, more assertive. Each buzz, each flash of the screen, seemed to fuel her. She grabbed a fistful of his hair, yanking his head back.“Watch. Watch it ring.”
She fucked him slowly. She didn't need to go deep. The artificial cock going inside him with every drive of her hips. Mark’s body shuddered, accepting it, his own cock hard and trapped against the marble. Tears of strain, of overwhelming sensation, leaked from the corners of his eyes.
“You like that?” she snarled, her composure fracturing into something raw and ragged. “You like being the one taken? Being used?”
He choked out.
The phone buzzed again.And again. It became the metronome to their act.Buzz. Thrust.Buzz. Thrust. Julie’s breathing was ragged, sweat tracing the line of her spine. She was not just fucking him; she started to jerk him off from behind while motioning into him. She was fucking the life she’d had, the quiet disappointment, the sterile apartment, the ghost of the shy girl. She was fucking Christophe’s betrayed, confused face and useless cock right out of her mind.
With a final, searing buzz that lasted until the call went to voicemail, Julie drove into him one last time and held there, her body rigid, a low, guttural cry tearing from her throat. It wasn’t an orgasm of pleasure, but of release—a violent expulsion of every repressed thing. Mark came a second later, his release painting the white marble in stark, streaking proof of his submission.
The phone, finally, was silent and dark.A long time passed, they stood still, just the movement of her hand stroking him. The grey light deepened towards evening.
“He’ll stop calling now,” Julie said, her voice empty.
“Probably.” Mark shifted, wincing. She unbuckled the harness, letting it fall to the floor with a thud. The pale silicone was slick and shone in the dim light.
“What happens next?” he asked, staring at the ceiling.
Mark sat up, his back against the island cabinet. He looked at her—really looked—at the woman cleaning the cum on the kitchen counter of her destroyed sanctuary. “We meet there” she said, fleeping her phone, showing off an address on google maps.
He turned her head. “In the burbs?”
“Our last night. After you leave. For ever"
“Because we’ve burned this down,” he said, gesturing around the white room. “There’s nothing here but ghosts."
Julie closed her eyes. The idea was insane. Reckless. The kind of thing the girl she’d been online would have leaped at without a thought.
“Let's get ready,” she whispered "No sex til then. You ll need stamina."
“Okay,” he echoed.
They sat, two ruins in a ruined room, and she began, silently, to prepare the final wreckage.