Chapter 24: Couch, Counter, and Cum
The phone buzzed against the coffee table, a sharp vibration that cut through the heavy breathing and the wet sounds and the low, satisfied moans still echoing off the living room walls.
Mike reached for it with a hand that trembled slightly. His fingers were slick, and he had to wipe them on his thigh before he could unlock the screen. Casey's chin was still hooked over his shoulder, her breath warm against his ear, her body pressed against his back like she was trying to climb inside him.
He read the message aloud.
"Mandy says they repelled another wave. No Despair Bomb yet. Everyone's okay."
The relief that rippled through the room was almost tangible. Katrina let out a breath she hadn't realized she'd been holding. Jenny's shoulders dropped. Mara, still sprawled face-down on the rug with her dark curls fanned out around her head and her thighs slick with sweat and other fluids, made a sound that was half-laugh, half-sob.
"Thank God," Mara muttered into the carpet.
"Don't thank God yet," Casey said. "Thank Mandy. She's the one who set up the defenses."
"Thank Mandy," Mara amended.
Mike set the phone back on the table. He should have felt relieved. He did feel relieved. But there was something else underneath it—a restless energy, a buzzing in his veins that had nothing to do with the sex and everything to do with the fact that his daughter was three states away, under siege, and he couldn't do a goddamn thing about it.
Casey felt it too. He could tell by the way her fingers dug into his shoulders, by the way her teeth grazed his earlobe.
"Everyone's still wired," she said. Her voice was low, meant only for him. "Nobody's going to sleep tonight."
"I know."
"So we keep going."
It wasn't a question. Casey didn't ask questions when she'd already made up her mind. She pulled away from him, stood up, and surveyed the room like a general surveying a battlefield. Her hair was a mess. Her skin was flushed. There was a smear of something on her stomach that she didn't bother to wipe off.
Her eyes landed on Mara.
The lawyer was still on the rug, her cheek pressed to the carpet, her ass still raised in the air from where Mike had been buried inside her minutes ago. She looked wrecked. She looked satisfied. She looked like she was about to fall asleep right there.
Casey wasn't having that.
She grabbed Mike by the wrist and hauled him to his feet. He stumbled, caught himself, and found himself being shoved toward Mara with the kind of force that brooked no argument.
"Her ass," Casey said. She pointed. "You've been staring at it all night."
Mike opened his mouth to protest—he hadn't been staring, not really, not any more than he'd been staring at everyone else—but Casey's glare cut him off before he could get the words out.
Mara lifted her head. Her dark eyes found Mike's, and something sparked there—amusement, yes, but also a heat that hadn't dimmed. She laughed, low and throaty, and rolled onto her stomach.
Her back arched. Her ass rose.
"You heard the lady," she said.
Mike knelt behind her. The floor was hard under his knees, but he barely noticed. His hands found Mara's hips—warm, damp, still trembling slightly from her earlier orgasm—and he pulled her back against him.
She was slick everywhere. Her thighs glistened. Her cunt was still swollen and pink from where he'd been fucking her minutes ago, and the sight of it made his cock twitch despite everything.
But Casey hadn't told him to fuck her cunt.
Casey had told him to fuck her ass.
He spat on his fingers. The sound was obscene in the quiet room, wet and deliberate. He brought his hand down between Mara's cheeks and pressed two fingers against her hole.
She gasped. Her back arched higher.
"Go slow," Casey said. She had settled onto the couch, her legs crossed, her eyes gleaming in the low light. "She's tense. Work her open."
Mike worked her open.
He circled her rim with his fingertips, spreading his saliva, pressing just enough to make her whimper without actually pushing inside. Mara's breath came in short, sharp bursts. Her fingers clawed at the carpet.
"Faster," Casey said.
He moved faster. His fingers pressed harder, dipping into her tight ring of muscle, retreating, dipping again. Mara moaned. The sound was raw, unfiltered, the sound of a woman who had stopped caring about dignity hours ago.
"Harder," Casey said.
He pushed both fingers inside.
Mara screamed.
It wasn't a sound of pain—or if it was, it was the kind of pain that bled seamlessly into pleasure, the kind that left her grinding her hips back against his hand and begging for more. "Fuck," she gasped. "Fuck, Mike, your fingers are so—holy shit—"
Across the room, Katrina and Jenny had paired off on the couch. Katrina was on her back, her legs spread, her dancer's thighs quivering. Jenny's face was buried between them, her red hair spilling across Katrina's stomach, her tongue moving with a rhythm that made Katrina's breath hitch and stutter.
Calista was in the armchair. Diego was beneath her, his hands gripping her hips, his cock buried deep inside her as she rode him with a slow, grinding rhythm. Her silver hair cascaded down her back. Her skin glowed with that faint, warm light that was uniquely hers—elf magic, glamour, the kind of beauty that made the air around her smell like honey and ozone.
The whole room smelled like sex. Like sweat and salt and the faint, musky tang of arousal.
Mike withdrew his fingers.
Mara whined at the loss. She looked back over her shoulder, her dark eyes wild, her lips parted.
"Please," she said.
He didn't make her wait.
He spat on his cock—one quick, crude motion—and pressed the head against her ass. She was tight. So fucking tight. The resistance was immediate, a ring of muscle that clenched and fought and then, slowly, relented.
He pushed.
Mara screamed again. It was louder this time, ragged, the sound ripping out of her throat like something feral. Her fingers twisted in the carpet. Her back bowed.
"Fuck," she gasped. "Fuck, fuck, fuck—"
Casey knelt beside them.
Her hand found Mike's shoulder. Her lips found his ear.
"That's it, baby," she murmured. "Fuck her good. She's been so stressed."
Mike pushed deeper.
Mara's ass swallowed him inch by inch, so warm and impossibly tight. The friction was almost too much—the kind of pleasure that bordered on pain. He had to stop halfway, had to breathe, had to close his eyes and count to three or he was going to come right there.
"Don't stop," Mara begged. "Don't you dare fucking stop."
He didn't stop.
He pulled back. He pushed in. He found a rhythm—slow at first, then faster, then harder, until the sound of their bodies slapping together filled the room and drowned out everything else.
Casey's hand stayed on his shoulder. Her voice stayed in his ear.
"Harder," she said. "She can take it."
He fucked her harder.
Mara's screams dissolved into sobs. Her whole body trembled. She came with a raw, broken cry, her ass clenching around him so tight that Mike saw stars.
He didn't last much longer.
Three more thrusts. Four. And then he was coming, spilling inside her, a guttural groan tearing out of his chest as his hips stuttered and his vision went white.
He pulled out slowly.
Mara collapsed onto the carpet, her legs splayed, her breath coming in heaving gasps. She looked destroyed. She looked perfect.
Casey grabbed Mike by the jaw and pulled him in for a kiss.
Her tongue invaded his mouth. She tasted him—tasted Mara on him, the salt and musk and filth of it—and she moaned into the kiss like it was the best thing she'd ever experienced.
"Good boy," she whispered when she finally pulled back.
Mike was still catching his breath.
The room had quieted. Katrina and Jenny had finished—Katrina lying boneless on the couch, Jenny curled against her side, both of them glistening with sweat. Calista and Diego had stopped moving, Diego still buried inside her, both of them breathing hard.
For a moment, nobody spoke.
Then the phone buzzed again.
Mike reached for it. His hand was steadier this time. He read the message, and his face went still.
"What?" Casey asked.
He looked up. His eyes found hers.
"Mandy says Inez just called the beach house. Direct line, not a burner. She wants to negotiate."
The room went silent.
"Negotiate what?" Mara asked. Her voice was hoarse, but her lawyer's mind was already spinning, already analyzing, already looking for the trap.
Mike read the rest of the message.
"Rachel. She wants Rachel. In exchange for calling off the Despair Bomb."
Casey's jaw tightened.
"And if they say no?"
Mike's thumb scrolled down.
"She says they have forty-eight hours to decide. Then she stops asking."
The night stretched on. The phone stayed silent. And somewhere in Miami, a redheaded girl who had once been Inez Murphy's daughter sat on a beach house couch and stared at the ocean, wondering if her mother was capable of anything worse than what she'd already done.
The house had gone quiet hours ago, the kind of quiet that settled into the bones and made every creak of the old wood sound like a gunshot. Rachel sat on the couch by the window, her knees drawn up to her chest, watching the black water roll against the shore. The moon was a sliver behind clouds, barely enough light to see by, and she hadn't turned on any lamps.
She liked the dark. The dark didn't ask questions.
Her fingers traced the edge of the blanket draped over her shoulders. The fabric was soft, worn, the kind of thing that had been washed a thousand times and would probably fall apart in another hundred. She'd been sitting here for three hours, maybe four, since the last of the defenders had filed out—Stacy to check the perimeter sensors, Kim and Maryam to their posts by the front and back doors, Cameron to the hospital to sit with Jan.
Everyone had a job. Everyone had a purpose.
Rachel just had questions.
Why now? That was the one that kept circling back, the one that wouldn't leave her alone. Inez had spent the last year ignoring her—no calls, no letters, no acknowledgment that her daughter even existed. And now, suddenly, she was willing to deploy a weapon that could destroy half of Miami to get her back.
It didn't make sense.
Unless it wasn't about getting her back at all.
The thought had been gnawing at her for hours, a splinter she couldn't dig out. What if the negotiation was a lie? What if the real goal was to draw everyone into one place, to gather all the pieces on the board before knocking them over?
What if Inez wanted to kill her?
No. That didn't make sense either. If Inez wanted her dead, she could have done it a hundred times over the past year. She could have sent Eddie, or one of the Consortium's hired guns, or any of the dozen other operatives who owed her favors.
But sending a Despair Bomb? Sending something that would take out the entire beach house, everyone inside, everyone within a mile radius?
That wasn't an assassination. That was a statement.
The floorboards creaked behind her.
Rachel didn't turn around. She'd learned to identify footsteps in the dark—it was one of the first things she'd mastered after Inez had locked her in the vault. Beth's steps were light, almost skipping. Mandy's were heavier, more deliberate, punctuated by the occasional stumble.
These were Mandy's.
"Hey," Mandy said.
She dropped onto the couch, close enough that their shoulders touched. A moment later, Beth appeared on Rachel's other side, settling into the cushions with a sigh that seemed to come from somewhere deep in her chest.
For a long moment, nobody spoke.
The ocean rolled. The wind whispered against the windows. Somewhere in the distance, a gull cried out, confused by the darkness.
"You okay?" Beth asked.
Rachel almost laughed. It was such a small question, such a mundane thing to ask given everything that had happened. But Beth's voice was soft, and her hand found Rachel's knee under the blanket, and the touch was warm and real and human.
"No," Rachel said. "But I don't think I'm supposed to be."
Mandy nodded. She didn't offer platitudes. She didn't say everything would be fine. She just sat there, her shaggy brown hair falling into her face, her perpetual smirk absent for once.
"For what it's worth," Mandy said, "my parents would be losing their minds right now if they were here."
"Losing their minds?"
"Blowing off steam. The only way they know how."
Rachel turned her head. Mandy was looking at her with an expression that was halfway between amusement and something softer—sympathy, maybe, or understanding.
"I think I know what that means," Rachel said.
"Yeah?"
"Yeah."
Beth's hand tightened on her knee. "You interested?"
The question hung in the air, fragile and bold at the same time. Rachel could feel her heart beating, could feel the warmth of Beth's palm through the thin fabric of her shorts.
She thought about Inez. About the vault. About the year she'd spent in the dark, wondering if anyone would ever come for her.
She thought about the Despair Bomb, ticking somewhere in the night.
And she thought about how very tired she was of being afraid.
"Yes," she said.
Mandy moved first.
Her hands found Rachel's face, cupping her cheeks, drawing her in. The kiss was gentle at first—a question, not a demand. Rachel answered by leaning in, by parting her lips, by letting Mandy's tongue slide against hers.
Beth's hands were on her shoulders, pushing the blanket away. Then the straps of Rachel's tank top, sliding them down her arms, exposing the pale freckled skin underneath. Rachel shuddered as the cool air hit her skin.
"Stand up," Beth whispered. "Let us see you."
Rachel stood.
Her shorts were already unbuttoned—she didn't remember when that had happened—and they pooled at her feet. Her underwear followed, a scrap of cotton that Beth hooked with one finger and dragged down her thighs.
Then she was naked, standing in the middle of the dark living room, the two most beautiful women she'd ever known looking at her like she was something precious.
Beth reached up and traced the curve of Rachel's hip. Her fingers were light, almost reverent.
"We didn't play games like this when we were kids," Beth said. Her voice was hoarse. "Remember? We'd stay up all night talking about boys and magic and the future."
Rachel remembered. She remembered sleepovers in the Williamsons' basement, the two of them huddled under blankets while the VCR played some terrible movie they'd seen a hundred times before. She remembered whispering secrets that felt enormous and were probably nothing.
She remembered Inez finding out and forbidding her from ever going back.
"I like adult games better," Rachel gasped.
Mandy laughed. She had stripped out of her own clothes while Rachel was remembering—the tank top, the shorts, the mismatched bra and panties that were so quintessentially Mandy that Rachel almost cried. Now she pressed herself against Rachel's back, her breasts soft against Rachel's shoulder blades, her hands sliding around to cup Rachel's breasts.
"You're so fucking beautiful," Mandy murmured against her ear.
Beth was still on the couch. She'd pulled her shirt over her head, revealing the constellation of freckles that dusted her collarbones, the small silver rings in her nipples. Her blonde hair was a mess, sticking up in every direction, and her eyes were bright and hungry.
"Come here," she said.
Rachel knelt.
She didn't know why she did it. She just—wanted to. Wanted to be close to Beth, to feel her skin, to taste her. She crawled onto the couch, fitting herself between Beth's thighs, and pressed her mouth to the soft skin of her stomach.
Beth gasped. Her hand found the back of Rachel's head, fingers tangling in her red hair.
"That's it," she breathed. "God, Ray-Ray, that's—"
Rachel's mouth moved lower.
She kissed the inside of Beth's thigh, then the other one. She breathed warm air against the damp center of Beth's underwear, not-quite-touching, drawing out the moment until Beth's hips lifted off the cushion and she made a sound that was almost a growl.
"Stop teasing," Beth said.
Rachel pulled the underwear aside.
Beth tasted like salt and musk and something else, something Rachel couldn't name. She licked slowly, deliberately, learning the shapes and textures of her. Beth's legs wrapped around her shoulders, her heels digging into Rachel's back, her breath coming in sharp little gasps.
Mandy's fingers found Rachel's hips. Then her mouth, warm and wet against Rachel's tailbone, kissing her way down.
The room filled with sounds. Moans and gasps and the slick wet noises of mouths working against skin. Somewhere behind them, Rachel heard footsteps on the stairs—light, quick, curious.
She didn't care.
Mandy's tongue was between her legs now, and Beth was trembling beneath her mouth, and everything else could go to hell. She could feel her own climax building, a tightness in her belly that spread outward, making her fingers curl into the cushions, making her thighs shake.
"Not yet," a voice said.
Rachel pulled back just far enough to look. Mai stood in the doorway, completely naked, her dark skin gleaming in the dim light. Behind her, Felicity was already tugging off her shirt, and Maryam was leaning against the wall with her arms crossed, watching the scene with an expression of frank appreciation.
"The last one to come has to make breakfast," Mai said.
"Has anyone ever told you that your games are ridiculous?" Kim asked.
She had appeared behind them, still fully dressed, her curved sword hanging from a belt at her hip. But she was watching the scene with a heat in her eyes that belied her words.
"You don't have to play," Mandy said. She had crawled out from between Rachel's legs and was now lying on her back on the floor, her hand lazily stroking between her own thighs.
"I didn't say I wasn't going to play."
Kim unbuckled the sword belt and set it on the floor. The sight of that act—that small, deliberate gesture—sent a flutter through Rachel's chest. Kim never took off her sword. Not to sleep, not to shower, not even when she was meditating.
This was something else entirely.
"Adult games," Rachel murmured. "I really, really like adult games."
Beth laughed—a bright, genuine sound that cut through the tension. "Just wait," she said. "We haven't even started."
The next hour blurred.
Rachel found herself pulled onto the floor, tangled in a mess of limbs and skin and mouths. Somebody's fingers—she never did figure out whose—found her clit and worked it with a rhythm that left her gasping. Somebody else kissed her neck. Somebody else licked between her legs.
Beth and Mandy kept finding each other in the chaos. It was actually surprising how unsurprisingly it happened. When Rachel glanced over, one of them was inside the other—fingers or tongue or both, she couldn't tell—and they were moving together with the ease of practice.
That should have bothered her. It didn't.
Mai was straddling Maryam, grinding against her thigh. Mai's body moved with a fluid grace that seemed almost supernatural—the kind of motion that reminded you she had grown up hunting monsters in the wild. The proud curve of her bra had a spark of something in it now, a gift from her friend in the ocean. Maryam's hands were on her hips, guiding her, her short dark hair plastered to her forehead with sweat.
Felicity was nestled between Kim's legs. Her blonde hair spilled across Kim's stomach as she worked, and Kim's expression was the most undone Rachel had ever seen—her mouth open, her eyes half-closed, her carefully constructed composure crumbling into something raw and human.
"Do you like that?" Rachel heard herself ask.
Kim's eyes opened. She looked at Rachel across the tangle of bodies, and for a moment, something passed between them—a recognition, maybe, or a shared understanding.
"I like all of it," Kim said. Her voice was rough. "I like—ah—I like watching. I like being watched. I like—"
She broke off with a cry, her back arching, her hips bucking against Felicity's mouth. Rachel watched her come, watched the way her whole body shuddered and clenched and finally went limp.
Then she was being pulled away, turned over, pressed against the floor. Beth's mouth was on her neck. Mandy's fingers were inside her.
"I'm going to make you come now," Beth whispered. "Is that okay?"
"Yes," Rachel gasped. "God, yes—"
She came with a scream that she was sure the neighbors could hear, a scream that tore out of her throat and echoed off the walls. Her whole body convulsed. Her vision went white.
And when she finally came back to herself, all six of them were tangled together on the floor, breathing hard, slick with sweat and other things. The moon had shifted, casting different shadows through the windows.
For a long time, nobody spoke.
Then Mandy sat up. Her hair was a disaster. Her face was flushed. She looked at Rachel with an expression that was exhausted and satisfied and something else entirely.
"You're not going back," she said.
It wasn't a question.
Rachel shook her head. "No. I'm not."
"Good."
Mandy reached for her phone on the coffee table. She scrolled through messages, her expression shifting from afterglow to concentration to something sharper.
"Everything okay?" Beth asked.
"Yeah. Just checking in." Mandy set the phone down. Her smirk had returned, that familiar expression that Rachel had seen so many times growing up. "Stacy says the perimeter's clear. Cameron texted that Jan's awake and already bitching about hospital food."
"That sounds like Jan," Felicity murmured from somewhere in the pile.
"And your parents," Mandy said, looking at Rachel, "are apparently hosting quite the party back in Chicago."
Rachel didn't ask what that meant. She didn't need to. The warmth still lingering in her body, the phantom touches of six different hands, told her everything she needed to know about how Williamsons and their friends dealt with stress.
She sat up. The blanket that had been draped over her shoulders earlier was now crumpled somewhere behind her, and she pulled it over her lap. The ocean was still dark outside, still rolling, still indifferent.
But she wasn't.
"Forty-eight hours," Rachel said.
Mandy nodded. "Forty-eight hours."
"She's not going to stop."
"No."
"She's going to try something. Something worse."
"Probably."
Rachel looked at the phone on the table. Then at Mandy. Then at Beth, who was watching her with that big heart of hers and those eyes that had seen so much and still chose to see the best in people.
"Then we don't wait for her," Rachel said. "We don't give her forty-eight hours."
Mandy's smirk widened. It was the expression she wore when she had an idea. It was the expression that, twenty years ago, had preceded most of the trouble they'd gotten into as kids.
"What did you have in mind?" Mandy asked.
Rachel smiled. It was a small thing, fragile, but real.
"I'm done being the bait," she said. "I'm done being the prize. I'm done being the reason."
She stood up. The blanket fell away, and she didn't bother to catch it.
"I'm going to be the reason she loses."