Chapter 23: Patio Possession
The sun was a physical weight, a heavy gold coin pressed against the lid of the sky. Maria felt it sear into her naked skin where she lay on the faded striped lounger, a bead of sweat tracing the valley between her breasts. She kept her eyes closed, listening to the distant drone of a lawnmower, trying to convince herself this was just sunbathing. Not waiting. The ache between her legs, still tender and humming from the night before, was a lie her body told better than her mind.
The slap of the screen door was the only warning.
She didn’t open her eyes. She knew the sound of his footsteps on the hot concrete, the slight drag of his left foot when he was tired. Or wired. The shadow fell over her, cooling the furnace of her skin. She felt the presence of him, a magnetism that warped the air.
“You’re gonna burn,” Joe said, his voice rough from disuse.
“Maybe I want to,” she murmured, finally lifting a hand to shield her eyes, looking up at him.
He stood there, a silhouette against the blinding blue, holding two glasses of iced tea. Condensation dripped onto his fingers. Something gleamed, caught between his teeth. Not a lemon wedge. A perfect, clear cube of ice.
Her breath hitched. A direct callback, a filthy echo. Last night it had been her projection, her control, the porn flickering above them as they fucked each other’s mouths. Now it was this: silent, simple, deadly in its implication. He remembered. He was building on it.
He set the glasses on the rusty table with a soft clink. He didn’t speak. He just knelt beside the lounger, his knees cracking on the hard stone, and looked at her. Really looked. His gaze was a physical scan—the swell of her stomach, the dark thatch of curls, the taut line of her thighs. It wasn’t just lust. It was inventory. Re-claiming.
“Joe—” she started, a protest that died in her throat.
He leaned down, his shadow swallowing her whole. She could smell him—salt, cotton, and the faint, clean bite of his shampoo. His lips, cool and damp, touched the hollow of her throat. Then the ice cube followed, a shocking, delicious point of cold against her overheated skin. He trailed it down, a slow, molten line over her sternum, circling one nipple until it puckered tight and aching, then the other.
She arched off the lounger, a gasp torn from her. The contrast was exquisite agony. Her hands came up, tangling in his dark hair, not to push him away but to anchor herself. The ice melted quickly, a trickle of cold water mixing with her sweat.
“You taste like summer,” he mumbled against her skin, his mouth hot where the ice had been. “And sin.”
He moved lower, the ice dwindling to a sliver. He traced the soft plane of her stomach, the jut of her hipbone. Maria’s head fell back, her fingers tightening in his hair. Every rational thought—the affair, the broken trust, the profound fear of his hold on her—dissolved under this focused, glacial torture.
The ice was gone, fully melted, by the time he reached the thatch of curls. He exhaled, a warm puff of air that made her shiver. Then his mouth was on her, not tentative, not asking. Clamping over her clit with a wet, hungry suction that was immediately electric.
“Oh, god,” she choked out.
He sucked, hard, his tongue a firm, relentless pressure against the swollen nub. The remnants of the ice’s chill were still there in his mouth, a vanishing shock that amplified the searing heat of his tongue. He lapped at her, devoured her, his nose buried in her. One of his hands slid under her, fingers digging into the meat of her ass, pulling her cunt harder against his face. The other hand pinned her hip to the lounger, holding her still for his feast.
She was writhing, but he had her anchored. The pleasure was a tight coil, winding mercilessly in her gut. “Please… Joe, please…”
He lifted his head, his chin glistening with her. His eyes were black, pupils blown. “Please what? Use your words, Maria.”
She hated him. She adored him. “Don’t stop. Just… fuck, don’t stop.”
A grim, satisfied smile touched his lips. He lowered his head again, but this time he added a finger, slipping it easily into her sopping entrance, crooking it up to find that spot inside that made her see stars. He worked her with his mouth and his hand, a synchronized, ruthless assault. The coil snapped.
Her orgasm ripped through her, violent and surprising. She screamed, her back bowing off the plastic slats, her thighs clamping around his head. He rode it out, sucking and fucking her through the pulsing waves until she was boneless, whimpering, pushing weakly at his shoulders.
Before she could recover, before the aftershocks had even faded, he was moving. Hands on her hips, flipping her over with a grunt. The rough texture of the lounger pressed against her sensitive nipples. Her ass was in the air, presented to him. She heard the rustle of his shorts, the blunt sound of him spitting into his palm.
“Look at you,” he breathed, his voice thick. “All fucked out and ready for more. My greedy girl.”
The head of his cock, hot and insistent, nudged at her slippery entrance. He didn’t ask. He just pushed, a slow, devastating invasion that stretched her filled her utterly. A deep, guttural moan was torn from both of them simultaneously.
“Christ, Maria,” he panted, his hands gripping her hips so hard she’d bruise.
He began to move, short, sharp thrusts that quickly lengthened into brutal, full strokes. Each drive punched a choked sound from her lungs. He leaned over her, his chest plastered to her sweaty back, his mouth at her ear. “This is what you came back for. Admit it. This fat cock splitting you open. Nothing else ever feels this right, does it?”
She couldn’t answer. She could only take it, her own fingers scrambling for purchase on the lounger. He was right and he was wrong, and the conflict was a live wire in her chest.
He pulled back, kneeling up again, changing the angle. He fucked her harder, his balls slapping against her clit with every drive. One hand slid around her hip, his fingers finding her swollen, oversensitive nub and rubbing tight, furious circles.
“Gonna come,” he growled, the rhythm becoming erratic, punishing. “Gonna fill this perfect, tight pussy. You want that? You want me to claim it?”
“Yes!” It was a sob. A surrender.
He shouted, a raw, broken sound, and slammed home, hilting himself inside her as he came. She felt the hot, pulsing rush of him, triggereding another, sharper climax that clenched around him, milking him dry. For a long minute, there was only the sound of their ragged breathing and the distant lawnmower.
He collapsed forward, his weight heavy and familiar on her back. He nuzzled into the sweaty nape of her neck. They were a mess of sweat and come and melted ice.
Slowly, carefully, he slid out of her. He turned her over again, his movements oddly gentle now. He looked down at the evidence of their joining, slick and white, smeared across her thighs and stomach. He didn’t get a towel. He used his hand, his fingers tender as they smoothed through the mess on her stomach, painting it across her skin in slow, possessive strokes.
“Joe,” she whispered, exhausted, hollowed out.
“Shhh,” he said, lying down beside her on the narrow lounger, folding her into him. The sun beat down on their tangled bodies. He reached over to the table, handed her a glass of tea. The ice was mostly gone, the tea lukewarm. She drank it anyway.
They lay there in the silent, post-apocalyptic sunlight. The wisteria shadows lengthened across them. He had what he wanted. She had what she craved. The terrible, unspoken truth hung in the air between them, thicker than the humidity: it changed nothing, and it changed everything. It solved nothing. It only made the addiction deeper, the potential wreckage more complete.
He pressed a kiss to her temple, his lips dry. She closed her eyes, waiting for the words, the conversation, the reality that must now be faced.
But he just held her, as the sun began its slow fall, and said nothing at all.