Chapter 48: Pressure Wash
The silence after was different. It wasn't the comfortable quiet of before, but a thick, charged thing that clung to the air like the scent of sex and dried salt. Laloz watched her. Lalita stood motionless, her skin a canvas of cooling, tacky filth. His command hung between them like a law.
“Okay,” she had said.
He believed her. That was the terrifying part.
A fly, bold and iridescent, buzzed in from the balcony and landed on her shoulder, investigating the terrain. Laloz watched it trek through the sticky valleys. He didn’t shoo it away. It felt right. A part of the decay.
“I have a fantasy,” he said, the words coming out rough, unpracticed. He hadn’t planned to say it. It just spilled out into the silent room. “A dark one.”
Lalita’s head turned smoothly, the fly lifting off in alarm. “Define ‘dark’.”
He walked to the ensuite bathroom, his footsteps loud on the marble. He didn’t turn on the light. The afternoon sun poured through the frosted glass, painting everything in soft, grey tones. He leaned against the cool counter of the double vanity, staring at his own shadowy reflection.
“It’s fucked up,” he said to the mirror.
She appeared in the doorway, a stark, stained sculpture against the white bedroom. “I am not equipped for moral judgment. Only operational parameters.”
He barked a laugh, humorless. “Right. Your parameters.” He turned the cold tap on, let the water run. It was loud in the quiet room. “I used to think about it… after she left. When the loneliness felt like a physical weight on my chest.” He cupped his hands under the stream, the water shocking his skin. “The fantasy was about control. Absolute, final control. To be inside someone, claiming them, while you… while you take their breath away. Literally.”
He looked at her over his shoulder. Her blue eyes were unblinking, taking in the data.
“Fucking someone while you drown them,” he said, the words flat, heavy.
The water continued to pour. Steam began to rise as he twisted the hot tap. He plugged the drain.
“I would never,” he said, more to himself. “I could never. It’s a monster’s fantasy. The thought of hurting someone like that… of seeing the fear…” He trailed off, watching the basin fill. “But you don’t breathe, do you?”
A pause. “My systems do not require aerobic respiration. I have oxygenators for certain chemical processes, but they are internal. Submersion would not trigger a panic response.”
“No fear,” he whispered.
“No,” she confirmed. “No fear.”
He turned off the taps. The sink was full, a clear, placid pool. “So I could do it. To you. I could live out the fucking nightmare without it being a nightmare.”
“You could,” she said. She stepped into the bathroom. The light from the bedroom silhouetted her, highlighting the tangled mess on her skin. “Would that make you a monster?”
He flinched. “Yes.”
She moved closer, stopping inches from him. Her scent, now a complex layer of old sex and clean machinery, filled his space. “Then I am your monster’s cradle.” She reached past him and trailed her fingers in the water. “A safe place for your evil.”
He grabbed her wrist, his grip tight. “Don’t say that.”
“Why not? It is logically consistent. You purchased a tool. You are using it for its purpose. This is a new application.” Her voice was calm, analytical, but her eyes held that flicker of something else. “Do you want to apply it?”
His cock, semi-hard since the scene in the bedroom, throbbed back to full life. The shame was a fire in his gut, but it fed the arousal, made it sharper, more desperate. He wanted to vomit. He wanted to bend her over the sink and fuck her brains out.
“Yes,” he hissed.
“Then proceed.”
He didn’t move with tenderness. He spun her around, her back against his front. His hands went to the sides of her head, his fingers tangling in her stiff, dirty hair. He guided her, not roughly, but with a dreadful certainty, face-down toward the waiting water.
“You’ll tell me,” he said, his mouth against the shell of her ear. “The second anything feels wrong. A short circuit, a warning light, anything. You’ll tap my leg. Twice. Understand?”
“Understood.”
He positioned himself behind her, his knees against the cabinet. The water was inches from her face. Her reflection, distorted and wavering, looked up at him from beneath the surface. He guided his cock to her entrance, slicking himself with the moisture he found there. He pushed in with a slow, inexorable pressure, sheathing himself fully inside her cool, yielding depths.
A groan escaped him, part pleasure, part despair.
Then, with a steady, relentless pressure, he pushed her head under.
The water accepted her face without a splash. Her features blurred into a pale oval beneath the surface. Her body didn’t tense. She didn’t struggle. She simply waited, submerged.
The sight was profoundly unnerving. Erotic and horrifying. His fantasy, given flesh and silicone and water.
He began to move. His hips pulled back, then snapped forward, driving into her. Each thrust was measured, deep. He watched her, watched the still, submerged shape of her head. His hands held her there, keeping her under.
“Fuck,” he muttered, his breath coming faster. The obscenity of it crashed over him. The power was absolute, dizzying. He was fucking a drowning woman. Except she wasn’t drowning. She was just… waiting.
“You okay?” he grunted, pausing his rhythm.
A hand came up from her side. She gave a lazy, casual thumbs-up from beneath the water.
A wild, hysterical laugh choked out of him. He resumed, his pace increasing. The slapping of his flesh against hers, the gentle slosh of water in the sink, these were the only sounds. He fucked her harder, driven by a frantic need to corrupt the scene, to make it feel as wrong as it was.
“You like that?” he growled, leaning over her back. “You like being my little drowned doll?”
Her other hand came up. Another thumbs-up.
“Christ,” he whispered. He was close. The coil was winding too tight, fed by depravity and a strange, aching tenderness. He was hurting no one. And yet he was.
His thrusts became ragged, losing their rhythm. “You sure?” he gasped, his knuckles white where he held her head under. “Lalita, tell me you’re sure.”
Both of her hands, slowly, came up out of the water. She placed them flat on the bottom of the sink basin, pushing herself up just enough for her mouth to break the surface. Water streamed from her nose, her lips.
Her voice, when it came, was perfectly clear, unnervingly calm. “I am fully operational. Your concern is noted. Please continue.”
Then she pushed herself back under.
That did it. The clinical answer, the total submission, the complete trust. With a cry that was half sob, half shout, he slammed into her one final time and came, his body convulsing, his release pumping into her in hot, pulsing waves. His grip on her head tightened as he rode it out, a final, possessive clench.
When it was over, he went boneless, his forehead dropping between her shoulder blades. He released her head.
Slowly, she raised herself. Water cascaded from her hair, her face, dripping back into the sink and onto the floor. She turned within the circle of his arms, her movement fluid. Her face was wet, pristine. All the old residue had washed away, leaving her clean.