Chapter 3: Morning After
The morning sun was a brash intruder, painting bold stripes across the tangled linen and bare skin. Casey woke to the solid warmth of Rogan’s chest against her back, his arm a heavy, possessive weight across her ribs. She could feel him already awake, his breathing slow and measured.
“You’re thinking too loud,” she mumbled, her voice thick with sleep.
“Just counting my blessings,” he said, his lips moving against her shoulder. His hand slid down, palming the curve of her hip. “One. Two. Three…”
She laughed, a soft, sleepy sound, and wriggled back against him. The evidence of his own wakefulness was firm against the small of her back. “Is that a blessing or a curse this early?”
“An opportunity.” He stretched, the muscles in his arm corded, before settling back and pulling her tighter. “The beach can wait.”
They dozed, drifting in a haze of golden light and salt-tinged air until the growl of Casey’s stomach broke the silence. Rogan chuckled. “Right. Sustenance.” He rolled out of bed with a dancer’s grace, completely unselfconscious in his nakedness. “I’ll raid the fridge. Don’t move.”
He padded out of the room. Casey listened to the distant sounds of cabinets opening, the clink of glass. She stretched, feeling the pleasant ache in muscles she’d forgotten she had. The room smelled like him—cedar and sex and clean sweat. She didn’t move, just as he’d asked.
He returned with a tray: thick Greek yogurt, honey, a handful of almonds, two glasses of cold orange juice. He placed it on the bed and slid back in beside her. They ate in comfortable silence, sharing the spoon, his legs tangling with hers under the sheet.
“So this beach,” she said, licking honey from her thumb. “Will there be a performance? Should I bring euros to tuck in your waistband?”
He grinned, but it didn’t reach his eyes the same way. “No performance. Just me. And you. And maybe some very small, very expensive swimwear.”
“I didn’t pack a bikini.”
“Perfect.” He took the tray and set it on the floor, then turned back to her. The morning light carved the lines of his abdomen, caught the dark stubble on his jaw. The playfulness from moments before had condensed into something more potent. He looked at her like she was the only thing in the skyline.
He didn’t kiss her. Instead, he took her hand and led her from the bed, through the silent, sun-washed apartment, to the deep, sectional sofa in the living area. The Mediterranean sprawled beyond the glass, a blinding sheet of blue.
“Sit,” he said, his voice low.
She sank onto the soft cushions, the cool leather a shock against her skin. He stood before her, just looking, his gaze a physical touch. Then he knelt, putting himself between her knees. He placed her hands on her own thighs.
“Leave them there.”
His own hands came up to cradle her face, his thumbs tracing her cheekbones. This kiss was slow, deep, an exploration without rush. It was the antithesis of the night before—all deliberate build, a masterful drawing out of sensation. When he finally broke away, they were both breathless.
He guided her back, shifting her until she was lying along the length of the sofa. Then he moved, lowering himself over her, but stopping before their bodies touched, supporting his weight on his arms. He was a sculpture above her, every muscle defined. The tip of his cock brushed her belly, leaving a damp trail.
“Last night,” he said, his voice rough, “was about what we both wanted.” He dipped his head, nipped at her collarbone. “This morning is about what I want.” He kissed a path downward. “And what I want…” His tongue circled one nipple, then the other, before he moved lower, his hands spreading her thighs. “…is to taste you until you forget your own name.”
He did.
His mouth was relentless, skilled in a way that spoke of genuine pleasure in the act. There was no theatricality, only focused, devastating attention. His tongue worked her with a filthy, intimate precision, his groans of approval vibrating through her. She cried out, her fingers knotting in his hair, her hips lifting off the leather. The world dissolved into a white-hot point of sensation. He didn’t stop until her thighs stopped trembling against his ears.
Before she could float back down, he was moving, sliding up her body. He kissed her, letting her taste herself on his lips. His eyes were black, hungry.
“My turn,” she breathed, pushing at his shoulders.
He rolled onto his back, and she followed, straddling his hips. The position put her in control, high above him. She braced her hands on his chest, feeling the powerful beat of his heart. She rocked slowly, the slick, hot heat of her sliding along the length of him, not taking him inside, just driving them both mad with the promise of it.
She watched his face, the way his jaw tightened, the flutter of his eyelids. The performer was utterly gone. This was a man unspooling.
She cupped her own breasts, her thumbs rubbing over her hard nipples, her back arching. “You like watching me play with them?” she whispered, her voice husky.
A strangled sound escaped him. “Fuck, Casey.”
“You like seeing how wet I am for you?” She lifted herself slightly, guiding him to her entrance, and sank down just an inch, a mere tease, making them both gasp. “Or do you just like the view?”
With a growl that came from his core, he moved. It was shockingly fast. His hands locked around her wrists, flipping her onto her back in one fluid motion, pinning her hands above her head. His weight came down on her, overwhelming, delicious. Her nipples brushed the hard planes of his pecs.
“I like the sound,” he rasped against her mouth. “I like the taste. But right now, I need to be inside you so deep you feel it in your throat.”
He drove into her in one fierce, unyielding thrust. She screamed, a raw, broken sound of pure satisfaction. The careful control was incinerated. What followed was a primal, driving rhythm. The sofa creaked in protest. His grip on her wrists was iron, his other hand fisted in her hair, angling her mouth to his for a messy, biting kiss.
“Tell me,” he grunted, his hips pounding a relentless tempo. “Tell me who’s fucking you.”
“You,” she gasped, her world reduced to the slam of his body into hers. “Rogan.”
“Again.”
“You! Only you.”
He released her wrists, his hands sliding down to grip her ass, lifting her, splitting her open for a deeper, more devastating angle. She wrapped her legs around his waist, her heels digging into the small of his back, meeting him thrust for thrust. The obscene, wet sounds of their joining filled the sunlit room. Sweat dripped from his chin onto her chest. The air was thick with the scent of sex and salt.
It was a collision, not a coupling. A claiming. Her third orgasm tore through her with a violence that blurred her vision. He followed, his entire body seizing, a raw, guttural shout ripped from his lungs as he spilled into her, pulsing deep within her clenched heat.
For a long time, the only sounds were their ragged breaths and the distant cry of gulls. He collapsed onto her, his weight a solid comfort, his face buried in her neck. Slowly, sensation returned. The tickle of his breath. The cool kiss of the air on their damp skin. The relentless, beautiful glare of the sun.
He shifted, slipping out of her, and gathered her against his side. She nuzzled into him, utterly spent, completely sated.
His phone buzzed angrily on the floor, skittering on the marble tiles. He ignored it.
“The beach,” she murmured after a while.
“It’ll still be there,” he said, his fingers tracing idle patterns on her arm.
The phone buzzed again. And again. Insistent.
With a sigh, he leaned over and snatched it up. He glanced at the screen, his expression shifting from post-coital haze to focused irritation. “It’s Marco. The little shit.” He swiped to answer, putting it on speaker. “What?”
“Where the hell are you?” Marco’s voice was tense, a sharp contrast to his usual levity. “Luca’s been trying you for an hour.”
“I’m off. I’m busy. I’m contemplating the sea.”
“Contemplate it from the club. Luca’s freaking out. Javier’s sick. Food poisoning or some shit. He’s puking his guts out in the bathroom. We need you for the afternoon set. The ‘Mommy Makeover’ brunch crowd. They’re already seated, and they are thirsty.”
Rogan’s eyes met Casey’s. The peaceful future they’d sketched—an empty beach, small swimwear—dissolved. The real world, with its demands and schedules, came crashing back in.
“Fuck,” Rogan whispered, not to Marco, but to her.
He closed his eyes for a second, then opened them, the decision made. The performer’s mask slipped back into place, but it was tighter now, strained. “Tell Luca I’m on my way.” He ended the call and dropped the phone.
He looked at her, apology and frustration warring in his gaze. “Casey…”
She placed a finger over his lips. She understood the language of gigs, of last-minute calls. “It’s fine. Go be a dream boy.”
“Come with me.” The offer was impulsive, his hand tightening on her arm.
She raised an eyebrow. “To watch you grind for a room full of middle-aged women on a mimosa bender? I think our dynamic is confusing enough.”
He laughed, but it was hollow. He kissed her, a hard, promising stamp. “Tonight, then. After. This isn’t over.”
“I know,” she said.
He stood, a man pulled in two directions. He looked down at her, naked and magnificent on his ruined sofa, a vision he was being forced to walk away from. For a moment, the conflict on his face was naked and real.
Then he turned and walked quickly toward the shower, already shifting back into the role he was paid to play. The apartment felt suddenly quieter, larger. Casey lay still, the heat of him fading from her skin, the smell of him now mixed with the scent of their sex on the leather.
She looked out at the relentless, inviting blue of the sea. The beach would have to wait.
The beach would have to wait. The silence he left behind was a tangible thing. Casey listened to the spray of the shower, the muffled curse as he doubtless fumbled for a towel. She rose from the sofa, her body feeling used and glorious, and wandered to the floor-to-ceiling window. The Mediterranean teased, all that blue freedom he’d promised now locked behind glass. She pressed her forehead to the cool pane.
She heard him moving with efficient haste, the rustle of clothes, the stomp of boots. When he emerged from the hallway, he was transformed. Tight black jeans, a grey henley stretched across his chest, his hair artfully messy. He smelled of soap and his cologne, the scent of their sex scrubbed from his skin. Only his eyes, shadowed and intense, remained from the man on the sofa.
“Lock up when you leave,” he said, grabbing his keys from a marble bowl. “Or don’t. Stay. Raid the fridge. Use the pool. I don’t care.”
“You have a key hidden under a rock?” she asked, her voice quiet.
“Under the lemon tree pot. Don’t tell anyone.” He was at the door, a figure of contained energy. He paused, his hand on the handle. He looked back at her, naked in the sunlight. A muscle twitched in his jaw. “Tonight.”
Then he was gone. The door clicked shut with a final, soft sound.
The apartment settled around her. She showered in his bathroom, using his sharp, citrus-based soap, and toweled off with a linen that still carried his scent. She did raid the fridge, assembling a haphazard lunch of olives, manchego, and leftover tortilla. She ate at the kitchen island, her bare feet cool on the tiles. She did not go to the pool. She stayed, a ghost in his spaces, tracing the outlines of his life from the art on the walls to the expensive, barely-used blender.
The sun arced across the sky. Her phone buzzed with messages from her agent, about a casting call in Barcelona next week. The real world, her world, was also impatient. She ignored it. She felt suspended, waiting for the axis of this new, unexpected planet to complete its turn.
Dusk was painting the sky in washes of violet and orange when she heard the key in the lock. Her heart did a stupid, involuntary leap. He entered, and the energy he brought was different. It was jagged, buzzing, the dissipated adrenaline of a performance still crackling around him. He kicked the door closed and leaned back against it.
He looked wrecked. His hair was genuinely disheveled now, the careful styling sweated out. His henley was damp in patches. There was a faint smear of pink lipstick on his collar. His eyes found her instantly, a dark flash in the dim room.
“Hey,” she said from the sofa.
He just looked at her for a long moment, breathing slowly. “Hey.”
He pushed off the door and walked to the kitchen, pulling a bottle of water from the fridge. He drank half of it in one long pull, his throat working. He finally turned, leaning against the counter. The silence wasn’t comfortable anymore. It was charged, brittle.
“How was the mommy makeover?” she asked, trying to soften the edge.
“Loud. Hands-y. A fucking marathon.” His voice was rough, stripped raw. “Javier’s apparently still puking. I did two full solo sets and a trio with Marco and Leo. My knees feel like ground glass.”
“You smell like champagne and regret.”
A ghost of his old grin appeared. “Cheap perfume and regret. They douse themselves in it.” He set the bottle down with a sharp click. “I had to be charming for four straight hours. I had to smile while some woman named Karen squeezed my ass so hard she’ll have bruises on her fingers. I had to perform.”
He said the word like a curse. He walked toward her, each step deliberate. The room seemed to shrink. He stopped in front of her, looking down. The glitter from the stage was caught in the stubble along his jaw.
“I need to not perform,” he said, his voice dropping to a low, raw scrape. “For one fucking second.”
He reached down, his hands hooking under her arms, and hauled her up off the sofa. It wasn’t gentle. It was a necessity. His mouth crashed down on hers. This kiss was nothing like the morning’s slow exploration. It was claiming, erasing. She could taste his exhaustion, his frustration, the faint, synthetic tang of someone else’s lipstick. She kissed him back with equal ferocity, her nails digging into the damp cotton covering his shoulders.
He broke the kiss, his breath hot on her cheek. “I need you to fuck me up, Casey. I need to not be in control.”
He stripped his henley over his head and tossed it aside. Then his hands were on her, urgent and demanding, pushing the loose t-shirt she’d borrowed up and over her head. They were both bare from the waist up, standing in the gloom of the living room. He backed her towards the bedroom, but didn’t make it past the oversized armchair. He spun her around, pressing her front against the high back of it.
“Hold on,” he commanded, his voice guttural.
She gripped the leather, the coolness a shock. He kissed the notch between her shoulder blades, a stark contrast to what came next. His hand landed on her ass, a sharp, stinging slap that made her gasp and arch. He did it again, on the other cheek, the sound cracking through the quiet room. A bright, hot bloom of pain spread, mixing dizzyingly with the pulse of arousal between her legs.
“Is this what you need?” she panted, pushing her hips back.
“Shut up.” His hands gripped her hips, his fingers biting into her flesh. He yanked her pajama shorts and her underwear down to her knees in one rough motion. The air was cool on her wet skin. He freed himself from his jeans, the sound of his zipper harsh. He didn’t wait, didn’t tease. He spat into his palm, slicked himself once, and drove into her from behind.
The force of it stole her breath. She cried out, a sharp, unfiltered sound. He was thicker, harder than she remembered, filling her with a brutal, perfect stretch. He didn’t pause, setting a deep, punishing rhythm immediately. Each thrust rocked her against the chair, the leather digging into her hips. His chest was plastered to her back, his sweat-slick skin sliding against hers.
“This,” he grunted, his mouth at her ear. “This is real. This is the only fucking thing that’s real right now.”
His rhythm was relentless, a physical exorcism. He fucked her with a single-minded intensity that was almost frightening. This wasn’t love-making. It was a collision, a need to obliterate the memory of a hundred hungry, anonymous eyes. She let go, meeting his violence with her own, pushing back against him, taking him deeper. The slapping sound of their bodies, the creak of the chair, his ragged curses filled the darkening room.
“You feel that?” he rasped. “You feel how deep I am? I can’t get this deep on a fucking stage.”
Her climax built not as a wave but as a detonation, shattering from the inside out. She screamed into the leather, her body clamping around him in vicious, rhythmic pulses. It triggered his own. With a hoarse, broken shout, he plunged as deep as he could go and held there, his whole body rigid. She felt the hot, urgent jets of his release flooding into her, his hips jerking with each spurt.
He collapsed against her, his weight driving her harder into the chair. They stayed like that, welded together by sweat and come, breathing in shattered, synced gasps. Slowly, the world filtered back in. The last streaks of light in the sky. The distant hum of a scooter on the road below.
He softened inside her and slowly pulled out. A wet, warm trickle followed. He turned her around, his hands gentler now, cradling her face. He kissed her, slowly, deeply. It tasted like salt and exhaustion and something like peace.
Later, tangled in the sheets of his bed, the moon now the dominant light, she traced the lines of his torso. He watched her, his eyes heavy-lidded.
“You like to perform,” she murmured, her voice a sleepy slur. The idea formed from the haze, a dark, intriguing shape.
“It pays the bills for this view,” he said, gesturing weakly towards the window.
“We could strip for everyone,” she said, letting the idea hang. “At that club. The one down on the port. The one with the velvet ropes and the sign that’s just an X.”
He went very still. His eyes, which had been drifting shut, snapped open and fixed on her. A slow, wicked grin spread across his face, erasing the last traces of his earlier fatigue. It was the grin he used on stage, but now it was purely, privately for her.
“Both of us?” he asked, his voice a low rumble.
“Mmhmm.”
He rolled onto his side, propping his head on his hand. The sheet pooled around his waist. The fantasy was taking root, visible in the renewed heat in his gaze. “We walk out together. The music drops. We start on opposite sides of the pole.”
She nodded, smiling now too. “See who works the crowd better.”
His hand slid from her hip to her stomach, then up to cup her breast, his thumb rubbing over her nipple. “And then,” he said, his voice dropping to a filthy whisper, “after. When we’ve got them screaming. I take you right there in the VIP booth. Or I bend you over the fucking pole. Or I make you get on your knees and let me fuck your tits until I come all over that pretty face.”
A sharp, thrilling jolt went through her. “Mmm,” she murmured, arching into his touch, her own hand sliding down to find him already hardening again at the thought.