Chapter 2: Skyline Fucking - The Rooftop Takeover
The industry party was a shimmering cage of laughter and clinking glasses, but Rick moved through it like a ghost. Every smile he offered felt carved from wood, every anecdote about his latest book tour a hollow recitation. His editor, Gina, touched his arm, her eyes concerned. "Rick, honey, you're a million miles away. Is Kate here?"
"Not tonight," he said, the words tasting like ash. "She had a...conference."
Gina smirked, misreading his tension. "Workaholic, that one. You should drag her out more."
He excused himself and fled to a shadowed balcony overlooking the city. The night air was cool, but it did nothing to soothe the burn in his chest. His phone felt like a live wire in his pocket. He didn't need to check it. He knew.
When the vibration came, it was almost a relief. A confirmation of the dread that had been his constant companion for weeks.
He pulled it out. A single word from Kate: Conference.
The time stamp glowed: 9:14 PM. A late one. He leaned against the railing, the sounds of the party bleeding into a dull roar behind him. His mind, the writer’s mind he couldn’t shut off, supplied the images instantly, vividly. They were sharper now, more detailed, refined by the accretion of previous "conferences."
Maybe she’d met him at a bar first. Monroe would have let his hand rest on the small of her back, guiding her through the crowd. His thumb would have stroked the space just above the waistband of her trousers. She’d have leaned into the touch, her professional demeanor softening, her eyes going dark with a hunger Rick no longer sparked.
Or maybe Monroe was already at the penthouse. Maybe he’d let himself in with the key Rick, in a moment of profound masochism, had given him. He’d be waiting in the dark when she arrived home from her actual police captain duties, still in her tailored suit and sensible heels. He’d take her briefcase from her hand, his other hand already on her throat, not squeezing, just holding, claiming. She’d gasp, her body going liquid against him before they’d even kissed.
Rick’s knuckles were white on the phone. He forced himself to breathe.
An hour later, back in the quiet tomb of his study, the follow-up text arrived. All clear. Home soon. x
The ‘x’ was a splinter of ice in his heart. He stared at it, then at the blinking cursor on his empty document. The words wouldn’t come. They were all trapped inside the movie playing behind his eyes.
He heard the key in the front door just after eleven. Her footsteps were lighter than usual, almost dancing. She appeared in the doorway of his study, haloed by the hallway light. She’d changed. The severe suit was gone, replaced by soft, dark leggings and one of his old, worn-out NYPD hoodies. Her hair was down, slightly damp at the ends from a shower. Her skin glowed.
“Hey,” she said, her voice a warm murmur.
“Hey.” He didn’t turn from his screen.
She came in, perched on the edge of his desk. The scent of expensive hotel soap and a deeper, muskier, unmistakable male smell wafted from her. It was the smell of Monroe’s skin, his sweat, his cologne. It clung to her, a flag planted in conquered territory.
“You’re working late,” she said, reaching out to brush a strand of hair from his forehead. Her touch was electric, alive. He flinched.
She withdrew her hand, but her expression didn’t harden. It held a placid, satiated softness. “I’m going to bed. Don’t stay up too long.”
He waited until he heard the bedroom door click shut before he moved. He wasn’t sure what propelled him—a need for proof, for punishment, for some twisted closure. He walked silently down the hall, past their closed bedroom door, and up the short, spiraling staircase that led to the penthouse’s private rooftop terrace.
The night air was sharper up here, laced with the distant scent of rain. The city sprawled below, a circuit board of cold, indifferent lights. The terrace was sleek and modern, furnished with a few weather-proof chairs and a single, long chaise lounge.
And there it was.
The evidence wasn’t dramatic. It was subtle, intimate. A single, empty crystal lowball glass sat on the small table beside the chaise. Two faint, smudged fingerprints marked its side. Near the head of the chaise, on the dark cushion, was a darker, damp patch. It could have been spilled drink. Rick knew it wasn’t.
His eyes were drawn to the glass railing at the edge. He walked over, his steps soundless on the decking. And there, at waist-height, pressed against the cold, clear glass from the outside, were two perfect, overlapping handprints.
Smaller hands. Kate’s hands.
His mind reconstructed it with forensic, cruel precision.
She would have been facing out, looking at the view, her palms flat against the glass for balance. Monroe would have come up behind her. He wouldn't have been gentle. He would have shoved her leggings and panties down in one rough motion. Rick could see it: the lace tearing maybe, a soft sound lost in the city's hum. Monroe’s own pants would have been open, his cock already hard, angry, freed.
He wouldn't have entered her slowly. He’d have used spit, maybe her own wetness, and driven into her in one brutal stroke. Kate’s head would have snapped back, a gasp torn from her lips, her fingers splaying against the glass for purchase. The railing would have vibrated with the impact.
From this vantage point, Rick looked down. Thirty stories below, toy cars slid silently through veins of light. Anyone with a powerful telescope could have seen them. The thought would have excited her. The risk. The exposure. The complete transgression of it.
Monroe’s hands would have gripped her hips, hard enough to leave bruises tomorrow. His pace would have been relentless, pounding, each thrust slamming her pelvis against the unyielding glass. The sounds would have been raw: skin slapping skin, her choked cries, his guttural commands lost to the wind.
“Take it. Take all of it, you hungry bitch.”
“Yes! God, yes!”
“Whose pussy is this?”
“Yours! It’s yours!”
Rick’s own hand came up and covered one of the faint handprints on the glass. His fingers didn’t match the impression. The glass was cold. He pictured her forehead pressed against it now, cooling her feverish skin as Monroe rode her from behind. He pictured her eyes, wide open, staring down at the dizzying drop, seeing nothing but the blur of lights as her body was used, possessed, thoroughly fucked in the most literal sense.
He could almost hear the final, shuddering groans, the way her body would have clenched around him, the hot, wet spill inside her that she’d have to feel for hours after. The way Monroe would have pulled out, leaving her exposed, dripping against the glass before he turned her around, made her get on her knees right there on the hard deck, and finished in her mouth.
Rick’s stomach turned. He clenched his jaw, the acid taste of jealousy and a horrifying, unwanted arousal burning his throat.
He turned from the railing, his gaze falling again on the chaise. The damp spot. He imagined her afterwards, collapsing onto it, boneless, wrecked. Monroe handing her the drink, watching her sip it, a conqueror surveying his territory. His thumb brushing her swollen lips. Her smiling up at him, a look of gratitude, of worship, that Rick had never seen.
The rooftop was just a setting. The handprints on the glass were just smudges. The stain on the cushion could have been anything. But together, in the silent language of his crumbling world, they formed a confession more damning than any he could write.
He descended the stairs slowly. The penthouse was silent. He stood outside their bedroom door, listening to the soft, even sound of her sleeping breath. She was sleeping deeply, peacefully, for the first time in months.
He did not go in. He went back to his study, sat in the dark, and watched the night fade into a grey, lifeless dawn. The narrative of his marriage had twisted into a genre he didn’t recognize, a story he was no longer writing, but merely enduring. And the next chapter, he knew with a cold certainty, would only get darker.
And the next chapter, he knew with a cold certainty, would only get darker.
The grey dawn did not bring clarity, only a sharper focus to his exhaustion. Rick sat at the kitchen island, the smell of yesterday’s coffee stale in the air, as Kate moved around him. She hummed while pouring orange juice, her body loose and fluid. A faint, purple smudge peeked from the collar of her robe when she leaned forward. He stared at it, a map of a territory he was forbidden from.
“Big case meeting today,” she said, slicing a banana with brisk efficiency. “Lunch will be a stale sandwich at my desk, probably.”
“I’ve got pages to finish,” he mumbled, the lie automatic. His document was still blank.
Her phone, facedown on the counter, buzzed with an incoming text. She didn’t reach for it. A moment later, it buzzed again. Then a third time, rapid-fire.
Her humming stopped.
She wiped her hands on a towel, too deliberately casual. She picked up the phone, her thumb swiping the screen. Her eyes scanned the messages. A faint, private smile touched her lips—the same smile she used to reserve for his stupid gifts, his surprise weekend getaways. It was gone in a heartbeat, replaced by a mask of neutral concentration.
“Gotta run,” she said, her voice suddenly all business. “Traffic’s a nightmare.”
She was out the door in a flurry, her briefcase in one hand, her phone locked in a death-grip in the other. He didn’t ask who had texted. The question would sit between them, rotting.
He waited five full minutes after the elevator doors slid shut. His own phone felt like a brick in his hand. He opened his messages, stared at her last “All clear. Home soon. x” from the night before. Then, driven by a compulsion he despised, he opened a web browser.
He typed “1st Precinct parking lot” and switched to satellite view. The image resolved into an aerial shot of a large, asphalt rectangle bordered by the beige concrete of the station house and a high chain-link fence. Cars were parked in neat, regimented lines. He zoomed in, his pulse a dull throb in his ears. His writer’s mind, his curse, began constructing the scene from the sparse details.
The text alerts would have been Monroe. A change of plans. Not a conference. A quickie.
She would have driven to work, her body still humming from the rooftop, from the chaise, from him. She’d have parked in her reserved spot, maybe near the back, shadowed by the building. Monroe’s car—a dark, nondescript sedan he kept for such occasions—would have been waiting, nose-out for a quick exit.
She’d have walked over, her heels clicking on the asphalt. No hesitation. The passenger door would have been unlocked. She’d have slid in. The interior would have smelled of leather and his cologne and faintly of weed.
He wouldn’t have wasted time on hello.
Rick’s grip tightened on his phone. He could see it. Monroe’s large hand would have been on the back of her neck, pulling her face to his for a brutal, consuming kiss. His other hand would have been already under her skirt, pushing the fabric up her thighs. No panties. She’d have stopped wearing them for him, Rick was sure of it now.
“Missed you,” Monroe would have growled against her mouth, his fingers finding her wet, already ready for him.
“You saw me last night,” she’d have gasped, already arching into his touch.
“Not like this. Not in the daylight where I can see every fucking detail.”
In the satellite image, the cars were frozen, innocuous. In his mind, the sedan’s windows were fogging. Monroe would have reclined his seat back, his belt already undone, his zipper down. His cock would have been thick and heavy in his hand.
“Suck it,” he’d have commanded, not a question, a demand. “Get me nice and wet for that tight cunt of yours.”
And Kate, Captain Katherine Beckett, would have obeyed. She’d have lowered her head between the seats, her professional bun coming loose. Rick could hear the wet, filthy sounds. Monroe’s low groan. Her greedy, desperate swallowing. The slap of his hand on the dashboard as he got closer.
“Enough,” Monroe would have grunted, pulling her head up by her hair. Her lips would have been swollen, slick. “Turn around. On your knees. Face the window.”
She’d have scrambled, awkward in the confined space, hiking her skirt up around her waist. She’d have braced her hands against the passenger window, her forehead pressed to the cool glass, looking out at the parked cruisers, the uniformed cops walking to and from their shifts. Anyone could have seen. The risk was the point.
Monroe wouldn’t have entered her gently. He’d have guided the head of his cock to her entrance and shoved forward, burying himself inside her in one rough, deep thrust. The car would have rocked on its suspension.
“Fuck!” Kate’s cry would have been muffled against the windowpane, a mix of pain and overwhelming pleasure.
“Yeah, take it,” Monroe would have grunted, his hands gripping her hips, pulling her back onto him with each piston-like drive. The rhythm would have been fast and hard, a brutal claiming. The slaps of their bodies meeting would have been loud in the silent car. “You love this, don’t you? Getting fucked in your own parking lot like a common whore.”
“Yes! Yes, I love it!” Her confession would have been torn from her, each word punctuated by a jarring thrust.
“Who do you belong to?”
“You! I belong to you!”
Rick threw his phone. It skittered across the kitchen tiles, cracking the screen. The satellite image vanished. But the scene in his head played on, relentlessly.
He saw Monroe’s pace becoming frenzied, animalistic. He saw Kate’s body shuddering, clenching around him as she came, a sharp, choked scream escaping her. He saw Monroe following, his own orgasm a guttural roar, his fingers digging bruises into her skin as he emptied himself deep inside her.
Then, the heavy silence. The frantic rearranging of clothes. Kate, wiping the smudged lipstick from her mouth with a trembling hand. Monroe, zipping his fly with a satisfied smirk.
“Tonight?” he’d have asked, checking his reflection.
“I’ll text,” she’d have whispered, her voice raw.
A quick peck on her cheek, a possessive squeeze of her thigh. Then she’d have opened the car door, the bright daylight shocking after the dim, sex-heavy air. She’d have smoothed her skirt, tucked her hair, and walked back to her own car on unsteady legs. She’d have driven the few yards to her reserved spot, parked, and walked into the precinct, her spine straight, her face a mask of composed authority.
No one would have known. No one but Rick, sitting in his silent, empty penthouse, his imagination painting the filthiest, most vivid picture of all.
He retrieved his phone, the screen a spiderweb of cracks. It was a perfect metaphor. He stared at the damaged glass. The narrative was no longer something he observed. He was trapped inside it, forced to direct every degrading scene. And the worst part, the part that curdled in his gut, was the traitorous, shameful heat he felt low in his own body. His own arousal was the final, unforgivable betrayal.
The next "Conference" text would come. And he would be ready. He would have to be.
The cracked screen of his phone was a map of his fracturing world, each splintering line a new boundary crossed. He told himself he wouldn't check the satellite image again, but he did, twice, zooming in on the vague shadow he decided was Monroe's sedan. He imagined the steam on the windows, the frantic rocking motion, and felt a sick lurch in his stomach that wasn't entirely disgust.
Days bled into a pattern of silent mornings and text-alert evenings. The "Conference" notifications came like clockwork, each one a tiny detonation in his routine. He found himself waiting for them, his body tensing in the hours before their usual times, a pathetic hunter anticipating his own wound. He stopped writing entirely. The cursor blinked on a page titled "Chapter One" like a taunt.
His research became singular, obsessive. He googled things that made his skin crawl: "signs of a cuckold," "compersion," "how to repair a marriage after an open relationship." The clinical terms felt like accusations. He drank more, slept less, and started noticing things he'd previously ignored.
A black silk hair tie, not Kate's style, appeared on his nightstand. He held it up to the light, imagining Monroe tugging it from her hair, the red strands catching in the weave. He found a cigarillo butt in the terrace ashtray, a brand Monroe smoked. The scent of it, mixed with the night-blooming jasmine, created a nauseating perfume he couldn't escape.
One Wednesday, Kate left for work wearing a new perfume. It was muskier, more primal than her usual citrus scent. It was his scent, Rick realized, Monroe's cologne clinging to her skin from the night before, layered over her own soap. She hadn't showered. She’d gone to bed smelling of him, and now she was carrying that smell into her professional world like a secret tattoo.
"You're wearing a new perfume," Rick said as she fixed her earring in the hallway mirror. His voice sounded flat, detached.
She met his eyes in the reflection, a flicker of something—defiance?—passing through them. "Do you like it?" she asked, not answering.
"It's strong," he said.
"It's honest," she replied, and left.
That night, the "Conference" text came late, after midnight. He was dozing on the couch, a whiskey glass empty beside him. The buzz jolted him awake. The message was different: Running late. Conference running long. Don't wait up x.
The 'running long' did it. A cold, clear fury cut through the usual fog of his hurt. He knew where she was. He knew what "running long" meant. It meant Monroe was taking his time. It meant Kate was letting him. He pictured them in a hotel room, the sheets tangled, room service trays pushed aside. Monroe would be sprawled back, sated, watching Kate ride him slowly, her hair falling in a sweaty curtain over her shoulders.
He pushed himself off the couch, his movements sharp. He wasn't waiting tonight. He needed air, needed to move. He shoved his feet into sneakers and grabbed his keys, leaving the penthouse behind.
He drove aimlessly at first, the city's lights smearing into wet streaks on his windshield. His mind, however, had a destination. It led him downtown, to the sleek steel-and-glass tower that housed Monroe's consulting firm. He parked across the street, engine off, wipers slapping lazily at a light drizzle. The building's lobby was a glowing aquarium in the dark.
He didn't know what he was doing there. This was madness. Then he saw them.
The main doors slid open. Two figures emerged, huddled under a single large umbrella. Monroe, in a trench coat, his arm around Kate's shoulders. She was laughing at something he said, her face tilted up to his, illuminated by the streetlights. She was still in her work clothes, but her blouse was untucked, her hair mussed. Monroe's hand slipped from her shoulder, down her back, to rest possessively on the curve of her ass. She didn't pull away. She leaned into it.
Rick’s hands tightened on the steering wheel, the cracked leather groaning. He watched as Monroe guided her to a waiting town car idling at the curb. Before she got in, Monroe pulled her close. It wasn't a goodnight kiss. It was a deep, hungry reclaiming. His hands cupped her face, his body crowding her against the car door. Rick could see the tension in Monroe's back, the desperate way Kate's hands clutched at his coat.
When they finally broke apart, Monroe said something. Kate nodded, her expression soft and open in a way Rick hadn't seen directed at him in months. She slid into the car. Monroe slapped the roof twice, and it pulled away. He watched it go, a smirk on his face, before turning and walking back towards the building, probably to retrieve his own car.
Rick sat in the damp silence of his own vehicle. The image was seared into his mind: not a private sexual act, but a public declaration. The kiss. The possessive hand. The intimate familiarity. This wasn't just fucking anymore. This was something else. Something that walked in the open air.
He drove home, the streets a blur. The penthouse was exactly as he left it, silent and waiting. He poured another whiskey but didn't drink it. He just stood at the floor-to-ceiling window, watching the spectral lights of other towers, other lives.
An hour later, he heard the key in the lock. Her steps were quiet. She saw him standing in the dark and paused.
"You're awake," she said, her voice husky.
"I went for a drive," he said, not turning around. "Saw you. Outside Monroe's office."
The silence behind him was thick, charged. He could feel her calculating her response.
"It ran late," she said, her tone carefully neutral. "He walked me out."
"He kissed you." Rick finally turned. She was still in her coat, her cheeks flushed from the cold or from something else. "He had his hand on your ass. In public."
Her eyes hardened, a defensive spark cutting through the post-coital haze she carried. "It was under an umbrella. It was private."
"Don't." The word cracked out of him, louder than he intended. "Don't lie to me. Not about that. You gave me the rules. I'm following them. But don't treat me like I'm stupid."
She took a step forward, then stopped, as if the distance between them was a physical barrier. "What do you want me to say, Rick? That I'm sorry? I'm not. I needed air. I needed to not feel like I was sneaking."
"Sneaking?" He let out a bitter laugh. "Kate, you have a code word. You text me from the goddamn parking lot of your own precinct."
"That's your system!" she fired back, her voice rising. "Your way of controlling it! Of having a say! I'm just living it."
The truth of it punched the air from his lungs. She was right. The "Conference" alerts, the passive waiting, the shattered phone—it was his pathetic attempt to maintain a thread of authority in a situation where he had none. He was the author writing himself into a corner of his own story.
She saw the defeat in his posture and her anger seemed to drain, replaced by a weary pity that was infinitely worse. "Look," she said softly, shedding her coat. The scent of rain and Monroe’s musk filled the space between them. "It doesn't change anything here. With us. This is just… a thing. A physical thing."
He looked at her, really looked. Her lips were slightly swollen. A fresh love bite, purple and blatant, marred the side of her neck, just above her collar. She made no attempt to hide it.
"A physical thing," he repeated, his voice hollow.
She moved past him towards the bedroom. "I'm going to shower."
This time, he followed her. He stood in the doorway of the bathroom, watching as she turned on the rain showerhead. Steam began to billow, clouding the glass. She undressed with her back to him, her movements unselfconscious. The sight of her body, the familiar landscape he'd loved for years, was now a testament to a foreign invasion.
He saw the bruises. Small, dark fingerprints on the soft skin of her hips. A larger, mottled patch on the back of her thigh. She stepped into the shower, and the water sluiced over them, over the bite on her neck, over everything. She tilted her head back, letting the water run over her face, her expression one of profound, uncomplicated relief.
His eyes drifted to the wicker laundry hamper. Her clothes from the day were tossed in a heap on top. On the pale cream carpet, beside the hamper, lay a small, crumpled piece of black lace. Her thong. It was inside-out, damp in the center, the fabric stretched and torn at the seam.
He stared at it, this discarded, broken thing on the floor. It was more intimate, more violent than any verbal confession. It was the proof of the "thing." The raw, explicit, fucking truth of it.
He didn't move to pick it up. He just stared, listening to the water beat down on her body, washing another man's touch from her skin. The momentum of the night, of all the nights, gathered into a single, dark understanding in his chest. He wasn't just a spectator anymore. He was a curator of his own despair, and the exhibition was only getting started. The cracked screen, the satellite image, the hair tie, the cigarillo, the kiss under the umbrella, the torn black lace on the floor—they were all pieces of the same grotesque collage. He turned away from the steam and the sound of water, and walked back into the cool darkness of the apartment, the chapter of his compliance closing, a more dangerous one beginning to whisper in the wings.