Chapter 17: Stockroom Slut
The silence in the bungalow had thickened, acquiring a texture you could choke on. The email from George’s lawyer arrived three days later, a PDF attachment of cold, precise legalese outlining a buyout proposal. The numbers were fair, even generous. It was the clinical detachment that felt like a gut punch. Marc read it standing in the shop, the morning sun glaring off the computer screen, highlighting the dust motes dancing in the air George had once breathed.
Sterre had taken to surfing for hours, leaving before dawn, returning with her skin tight and salted, her eyes avoiding his as she rinsed her board. She’d claimed her victory, and the hollow echo of it was the only thing between them.
Today, she’d come to the shop. Not as a visitor, but as a ghost haunting the spaces George had vacated. She was supposed to be organizing the retail shelves, but Marc could feel her gaze like a physical touch on the back of his neck as he tried to focus on inventory spreadsheets.
He needed a specific repair epoxy, knowing it was in the cluttered storage room. He pushed through the swinging door, the air warmer back here, thick with the smells of neoprene, polyurethane resin, and ancient salt. A single, dusty bulb flickered, doing little to dispel the shadows pooled between stacks of old surfboard blanks and racks of faded wetsuits.
He found the epoxy tube on a high shelf, tucked behind a box of fin screws. As he reached for it, the door swung shut behind him with a soft click.
He turned. Sterre stood with her back against the door, blocking it. She was wearing cutoff denim shorts and a thin, white tank top, no bra. Her nipples were hard points against the fabric. Her face was solemn, but her eyes burned with a familiar, challenging fire.
“You’ve been hiding in here all morning,” she said, her voice low.
“I’ve been working.”
“You’ve been avoiding me.”
He didn’t deny it. He held up the epoxy tube. “I needed this.”
She stepped away from the door, moving into the cramped aisle between towering racks of longboards. The flickering light strobed over her, giving her movement a disjointed, cinematic quality. “Does it hurt?” she asked.
“Does what hurt?”
“That he’s really gone. That it’s just you now. And me.” She trailed a finger along the rail of a vintage Malibu, its yellowed fiberglass scarred with decades of stories.
Marc set the epoxy down on a workbench. “This isn’t a game, Sterre.”
“I know it’s not.” She turned to face him, leaning back against the longboards. The old foam creaked under her weight. “That’s why I’m here. I can feel you… pulling away. Into your head. Into that fucking email.” Her voice cracked, just slightly. “I won, but I’m losing you to the spoils.”
The raw admission stunned him. It was the first crack in her armor he’d seen since the kitchen. He took a step toward her. “You’re not losing me.”
“Aren’t I?” She looked around the dusty, shadowed room. “Bet you never thought a girl half your age would be this hungry for your cock, huh? That she’d ruin a friendship for it. That she’d still be standing here, starving, after she got what she wanted.”
Her words were coarse, but her delivery was fragile, a question wrapped in a dare. She was testing the solidity of her prize.
He closed the distance between them, his hands coming up to frame her face. “Stop.”
“Or what?” she whispered, but her eyes were glistening.
Instead of answering, he kissed her. It wasn’t gentle. It was a claiming, a confirmation, a desperate attempt to bridge the gap words had created. She gasped into his mouth, her hands flying up to clutch at his shoulders, her fingers digging into the muscle. She kissed him back with a frantic, sucking intensity, biting his lower lip, her tongue dueling with his.
When they broke apart, both were breathing heavily. “See?” she panted, her hands dropping to the buckle of his belt. “This is the only language we have left that doesn’t lie.”
She undid his belt, popped the button of his cargo shorts, yanked the zipper down. She shoved the fabric over his hips, his cock springing free, already thick and heavy. She didn’t pause. She sank to her knees on the concrete floor, grit sticking to her skin.
She looked up at him, her blue eyes wide and unwavering. “I need to taste you. I need to know you’re still here.”
She took him into her mouth in one smooth, deep slide. Her lips stretched taut around his girth. There was no teasing buildup, no playful artifice. This was pure need. She plunged down, taking him deeper than she ever had, until the head bumped the back of her throat. She gagged, a wet, choking sound that vibrated through his entire nervous system. Her eyes watered, but she held him there, her throat fluttering around him, before pulling back with a lewd, gasping pop.
“Fuck,” Marc groaned, his head falling back. His hands tangled in her sun-bleached hair, not guiding, just holding on.
She dove again, setting a relentless, deep-throating rhythm. Gag, swallow, pop. Gag, swallow, pop. Each time she took him deeper, her nose burying in the coarse hair at his base. Spit slicked his shaft, dripped onto her chest, soaking through the thin cotton of her tank top. The obscene, wet sounds filled the storage room, louder than the faint buzz of the flickering bulb. Her dedication was absolute, a physical prayer.
He felt the pressure building, a coil tightening low in his gut. “Sterre, I’m gonna…”
She pulled off, leaving him throbbing and exposed. A string of saliva connected her swollen lips to his glistening tip. She got to her feet, her knees dusty. She turned around, braced her hands on the rack of longboards, and looked back at him over her shoulder. Her expression was fierce, etched with a desperate kind of pride.
“No. Not like that,” she said, her voice husky. “Fuck me. Right here. Fuck me against the longboards, Marc. I want to feel the whole shop shake. I want you to forget your own fucking name.”
She yanked her shorts and underwear down to her thighs in one rough motion, presenting herself to him. The curve of her ass was pale in the dim light, the cleft glistening with her own wetness. The rawness of the invitation, the crude poetry of it, shattered his last reservations.
He moved behind her, his hand rough on her hip. He positioned himself, the broad head of his cock nudging against her slick entrance. She was soaked, her heat radiating out even before he entered.
He pushed in. Not slowly. One firm, deep, burying thrust that seated him completely inside her. She cried out, a sharp, satisfying sound that echoed off the fibreglass shells. She was incredibly tight, her walls clenching around him in shocked, rhythmic pulses.
“Yes,” she hissed, pushing back against him. “Fuck, yes. Give it to me. All of it.”
He withdrew and slammed home again. And again. The rack of longboards groaned and rattled with each impact. A fin box dug into his thigh, a sharp pain he barely registered. His world narrowed to the feeling of her hot, clutching cunt, the slap of his skin against hers, the sight of her blonde hair swaying with each punishing drive.
He fucked her with a focused, driving intensity. This wasn’t about pleasure, not solely. It was about exorcism. Each thrust was meant to drive out the ghost of George, the sterile language of the lawyer, the hollow victory. He fucked her to feel something, anything, other than the void that was expanding in his chest.
One hand gripped her hip, holding her steady for his assault. The other snaked around her front, slipping under the damp tank top to roughly pinch and roll her nipple. She moaned, a broken, continuous sound.
“You feel that?” he grunted, his breath hot against her neck. “You feel how deep I am in you?”
“Yes! God, yes!”
“This what you wanted? This what you won?” The words were cruel, but they were part of the act now, the script of their mutual destruction.
“It’s all I want!” she screamed back, her voice raw. “It’s all I am now! Do it! Make me come! Make me forget everything!”
His fingers found her clit, a hard little nub amidst the wet, tangled hair. He rubbed it in tight, frantic circles, matching the brutal, piston-like rhythm of his hips. The storage room was an oven, filled with the smell of sex and dust and their animal sweat.
Her inner muscles began to spasm, a fluttering prelude that clenched around him like a fist. Her breathing hitched, became a series of sharp, punctuating cries. “I’m… I’m gonna…”
“Come,” he commanded, driving into her one last, final time, hilt-deep. “Come on my cock.”
Her orgasm ripped through her with a silent, shuddering violence. Her body locked, back arched, a strangled scream trapped in her throat as her cunt milked him in frantic, rhythmic pulses. The sight of it, the sheer tactile force of her climax, triggered his own. With a guttural roar, he erupted inside her, jet after hot jet flooding her depths, his own hips jerking erratically as he emptied himself into the victory she’d carved out between them.
He collapsed over her, both of them supported by the shuddering longboard rack. Their sweat-slicked skin stuck together. He was still buried inside her, both of them panting, the only sound their ragged breath and the faint, persistent buzz of the faulty light.
Slowly, he softened and slipped out. A trickle of their combined release slid down her inner thigh. She didn’t move. Her head was bowed, her forehead resting against the cool fiberglass of a board.
He pulled his shorts up, his hands trembling. He reached out, gently tugged her tank top back down over her hips. She straightened up slowly, wincing, and pulled her shorts up. She turned to face him. Her makeup was smudged, her lips bruised-looking. She looked utterly wrecked, and younger than her years.
She looked at the epoxy tube on the workbench, then back at him. A weak, shattered smile touched her lips. “Did you get what you needed?”
He didn’t know if she meant the epoxy, or something else entirely. He just nodded.
She stepped forward, wrapped her arms around his waist, and buried her face in his chest. He held her, feeling the fine tremors running through her body. The flickering light finally died with a faint ping, plunging them into total darkness, save for the thin strip of daylight under the door. They stood locked together in the hot, black silence, two ghosts haunting the same ruin, unsure of how to find their way out.
They stood locked together in the hot, black silence, two ghosts haunting the same ruin, unsure of how to find their way out.
Her whisper was a frayed thread in the dark. “The light blew.”
“Yeah.”
“Probably for the best.” Her fingers traced the waistband of his shorts. “Nobody needs to see this mess.”
He couldn’t see her face, only feel the slight tremble in her hands. It contradicted the boldness of her touch. He found her cheek with his palm. It was wet. “Hey.”
“Don’t.” She turned her face into his hand, a silent apology. “Just don’t, okay? Not yet.”
She kissed the center of his palm, a soft, desperate press of her lips. Then her hands were on him again, working with a frantic urgency he felt more than saw. His shorts were already open. She pushed them down, her fingers curling around him, finding him already thickening again under her touch. A rough, astonished laugh escaped her.
“Un-fucking-believable,” she murmured. Her grip was possessive, a steady, slow pump. “You’re a machine.”
It wasn’t a compliment. It sounded like an accusation. He leaned back against the workbench, the wood edge digging into his spine, and let her work. In the absolute dark, every sensation was amplified. The slick sound of her fist moving over his skin. The quick, shallow rhythm of her breathing. The scent of her, of them, mixed with the ozone from the dead bulb.
“Turn around,” he said, his voice gravel.
“What?”
“You heard me.”
He guided her by the shoulders, turning her to face the longboard rack again. He heard the shuffle of her shorts being shoved further down her thighs. He knelt behind her on the hard concrete, his hands sliding up the backs of her smooth thighs. He heard her sharp intake of breath when his thumbs found her inner seam and parted her.
The darkness made him rely on taste, smell, touch. She was already swollen, wet, the aftermath of their fucking glazing her skin. He didn’t tease. He leaned in and licked a broad, slow stripe from her perineum up through her soaked folds. She jolted, a choked gasp echoing off the boards.
“Oh, fuck, Marc…”
He did it again, harder. Then he settled in, his mouth covering her completely. He ate her with a single-minded focus, his tongue plunging inside her, then circling her clit with firm, relentless pressure. He held her hips firm as she tried to buck against him. This wasn’t foreplay. This was reclamation. A way to wipe the slate clean of the harsh words, the bitter victory. To taste only her, the pure, salty-sweet essence of her arousal.
She muffled her cries against her own arm, her sounds becoming broken, pleading whimpers. “Don’t stop, please, please, right there…”
He felt her body begin to coil, her thighs clamping around his head. He slid two fingers inside her, curling them, finding that spongy spot deep within. He worked her with his mouth and his hand in a brutal, synchronized rhythm. Her orgasm crashed over her suddenly, a silent, seismic event. Her whole body went rigid, then shook violently, a series of pulsing contractions around his fingers as she came with a force that left her breathless and sobbing.
He rose, his knees protesting, and pulled her upright. She was boneless, leaning into him. He turned her, lifted her, and sat her on the edge of the cluttered workbench. Tubes of resin and tools clattered to the floor. He pushed her back so she was lying on the hard surface, her legs hanging over the edge.
He moved between them. The darkness was absolute. He found her entrance by feel, the head of his cock nudging against her slippery heat. He pushed inside in one slow, inexorable motion, filling her completely. She was impossibly tight, still fluttering from her climax. She wrapped her legs around his waist, her heels digging into the small of his back.
He fucked her there on the bench, a deep, grinding rhythm. Without sight, every sound was obscenely clear: the wet slap of their bodies joining, the creak of the old wood under their weight, her hitched moans with every inward thrust. He leaned over her, his hands beside her head, their breath mingling in the hot, dusty air.
She arched up, seeking his mouth. They kissed, a messy, open-mouthed clash of teeth and tongue that tasted of salt and her. When she broke away, her words were a hot puff against his cheek.
“You ruined me for every other man,” she whispered, her hips rolling to meet his next thrust. She clenched around him, a tight, slick vise. “You know that, right?”
He drove into her, harder. “Sterre…”
“Say it,” she demanded, her voice cracking. Her hands came up, fingers tangling in his hair, pulling. “You love it. You love my dripping wet pussy, half your age. You love that you’re the only one who gets this. Admit it.”
He couldn’t. The words stuck in his throat, a dam holding back a flood of dangerous truth. Instead, he answered with his body. He pistoned into her, changing the angle, hitting a spot that made her cry out. The workbench shuddered, threatening to collapse. He was lost in the dark, in the feel of her, in the raw, owning truth of her words. He was ruining her, and she was ruining him right back, and neither of them knew how to stop.
His own climax built, a hot, urgent pressure. He grunted, a raw, animal sound, and buried himself to the hilt as he came, his release pumping into her in thick, pulsing waves. He collapsed forward, catching his weight on his elbows, his forehead resting against her shoulder.
For a long moment, there was only the sound of their ragged breathing in the void. Then, a sliver of light appeared under the door, widening as it was pushed open. The world flooded back in: the hum of the shop refrigerator, the distant sound of a car passing, the stark, unforgiving fluorescent light from the main room.
It silhouetted a figure in the doorway. A customer, a middle-aged man in a floral shirt, frozen, his hand still on the knob. His eyes went wide, taking in Marc’s bare back, Sterre’s legs wrapped around him, their tangled state on the workbench.
“Uh,” the man said. “Sorry, I… the sign said open.”
Marc didn’t move. He just closed his eyes against the light. Sterre, beneath him, let out a soft, helpless sound that was halfway between a laugh and a sob.