Chapter 4: Second go
The drive home from the salon was a blur of sun-drenched pavement and low hum of the car’s engine. Brenda’s warnings echoed, but they were distant, muffled by a louder, more insistent pulse between Donna’s legs. It was a ridiculous, constant thrum, as if the mere memory of the gel had activated something in her own body. She shifted in the driver’s seat, the fabric of her jeans suddenly abrasive. All she could think about was the weight of him, the new, relentless rhythm, the way his eyes had looked so purely, stupidly happy.
The house was quiet, steeped in the particular afternoon silence of an empty home. Sunlight cut across the living room rug, highlighting dust motes dancing in the air. She dropped her purse on the kitchen counter, the sound too loud. Her skin felt too tight. She climbed the stairs, each step a deliberate action, her hand trailing on the banister.
In the bedroom, the peeling wallpaper near the closet seemed more pronounced, a map of subtle neglect. She didn’t turn on the light. She went straight to the walk-in closet, moved aside a stack of sweaters, and reached into the depths of her knitting bag. Her fingers closed around the cool, dense silicone of the dildo first. She pulled it out, holding it in the dim light. It was larger than Clark, a secret she’d bought on a desperate, wine-fueled night months ago, full of shame immediately after. The shame was gone now, replaced by a sharp, specific need.
She undressed quickly, letting her clothes pool on the closet floor. The air was cool on her skin. She lay back on the bed, the comforter scratchy against her shoulders. She didn’t close her eyes. She looked at the ceiling crack she knew by heart and thought about the gel. Not the warnings. The effects. The promised intensity, the loss of control. Her own hand moved, clumsy at first, then with a focused urgency that was almost clinical. But when she used the toy, it was different. She imagined it was him, but him transformed, him as the gel had made him—insatiable, mechanically perfect. The fantasy was vivid, sensory. The imagined feel of his changed skin, the new hardness, the duration. Her breathing hitched, became ragged. It was over faster than she expected, a violent, shuddering release that left her legs trembling and her mind, for a few seconds, beautifully blank.
After, lying in the quiet, the emptiness returned, sharper. It was a hollow, hungry feeling. The thought of waiting for their usual tired, Saturday-night routine felt impossible.
She pushed herself up. The knitting bag yielded its other secret: the plain white box. She extracted the tube. It was still nearly full, a glossy, unmarked cylinder. Brenda’s voice tried to surface—tissue growth, hormonal chaos—but Donna silenced it with a simple, brutal thought: I want that again.
In the bathroom, the vanity was cluttered with her lotions and potions. She unscrewed the cap of the gel. It smelled faintly of menthol and something else, sharp and chemical. Without overthinking, she squeezed a generous bead onto two fingers. It was cool, slick. She applied it inside herself, the sensation immediately different from any lubricant she’d ever used. A cooling tingle began, not unpleasant, but intense, spreading a low-level buzz through her nerves. It felt activating, as if her flesh was waking up and tuning itself to a new frequency. She cleaned her hands, hid the tube behind the hairdryer, and went back to the bedroom.
She didn’t dress. She sat on the edge of the bed, the tingle deepening into a warm, persistent hum. She listened for his car.
When the garage door opener groaned to life, her heart kicked against her ribs. She lay back, arranging herself against the pillows, a deliberate presentation. The tingle was everywhere now, a live wire under her skin. She heard the back door open and shut, the familiar thud of his briefcase hitting the mudroom bench.
“Donna? You home?” His voice floated up the stairs, tired but cheerful.
“Up here,” she called, forcing her voice to sound light, normal.
His footsteps on the stairs were heavy, weary. He appeared in the doorway, still in his work shirt, tie loosened. He was mid-sentence. “You will not believe the metrics meeting today, it was a total circle of—” He stopped. His words dried up. His eyes traveled from her face, down her naked body, and back again. He blinked. “Whoa.”
“Hi,” she said, smiling.
“Hi.” He leaned against the doorframe, a slow grin spreading across his face. It was his regular, charming grin, oblivious and delighted. “This is a surprise. A good surprise. A great surprise. Did I forget an anniversary?”
“No,” she said. “I just missed you.” It wasn’t entirely a lie. She missed the version of him she’d had for two nights.
“Well, okay then.” He pushed off the doorframe and started unbuttoning his shirt, his movements hurried, fumbling with the cuffs. “Don’t move. I’ll be right there.”
She watched him undress, the tingle inside her spiking with anticipation. He was her Clark, slightly soft around the middle, his hair thinning in a way he’d started to joke about. The normalcy of him should have been a comfort, but all she could focus on was the potential, the chemical promise waiting on her skin. He joined her on the bed, his body warm and familiar. He kissed her, his mouth tasting of coffee and the mint from his drive-home gum.
“You seem… really ready,” he murmured against her neck, his hand sliding down her stomach.
The gel’s tingling sensation seemed to amplify under his touch, becoming a bright, electric feedback. She gasped, and the sound was genuine. It felt incredibly sensitive, almost too much.
“See something you like?” she whispered, parodying a line from a movie they’d once laughed at.
He chuckled, a low rumble in his chest. “Always.” He shifted over her, his weight a comfort. There was a moment of fumbling, the usual awkward alignment. Then he was inside her.
The effect was instantaneous. For her, the sensitivity was overwhelming, a cascade of sharp, almost painful pleasure that made her arch off the bed. For him, his eyes flew wide open.
“Holy—” he breathed, freezing for a second.
“What?” she managed to say, her voice tight.
“You feel… amazing. Different. Really different.” He began to move, and his rhythm was off, hesitant at first, then with a growing urgency. “It’s like… it’s buzzing or something. You okay?”
“I’m more than okay,” she said, pulling him down into a kiss to stop the questions. The tingling was merging with the friction, creating a feedback loop of sensation that was rapidly pushing her towards another edge. She could see the confusion and delight warring on his face. He was losing himself in it, his movements becoming less coordinated, more driven.
“Don’t stop,” she said.
He didn’t.
What had been a pleasant confusion in him solidified into a single, driving instinct. His hands, usually gentle or slightly clumsy, gripped her hips with a new authority. The rhythm snapped from tentative to punishing, a deep, piston-like drive that shoved her up the bed with each thrust. The buzzing sensitivity the gel created in her was a live wire now, overloading every nerve ending. She came almost immediately, a sharp, gasping climax that felt ripped from her, her fingers clawing at the comforter.
He followed a moment later with a guttural groan, his body shuddering against hers. She felt the warm pulse of his release inside her. She waited for the familiar softening, the gentle collapse of his weight. It didn’t come. His breathing was ragged in her ear, but the hard, insistent pressure within her didn’t fade. He was still rigid. Fully, unnervingly erect.
“Clark?” she whispered, her own body humming with aftershocks.
“I don’t…” he panted, lifting his head to look at her. His face was flushed, his eyes glassy with a pleasure that was tipping into bewilderment. “I'm still…?” He gave a tentative, rolling motion with his hips. The sensation made her gasp again, a fresh jolt sparking through her oversensitive flesh. He felt just as thick, just as hard as before. More, if possible.
“It’s okay,” she breathed, the words coming out as a plea and a command. She wrapped her legs around him, locking her ankles at the small of his back. “It feels good. Don’t stop. Please.”
The permission, the encouragement, cut through his confusion. A raw, hungry sound escaped him. He drove into her again, finding a new, grinding rhythm. The bedframe began a familiar, frantic complaint against the wall. She could see the effort in his jaw, the strain in his neck cords, but also a kind of awe. This wasn’t just stamina. This was something else. Something broken and rewired.
The second climax built in him faster than she expected. It wasn’t the slow, coiling tension of the first. It was a sudden, violent peak. He cried out, a sound stripped of any thought, and she felt another, hotter flood, more voluminous than the first. His whole body locked, trembling with the force of it.
And still, he didn’t soften.
He collapsed onto his forearms, his breath sobbing against her shoulder. “Donna,” he mumbled, his voice thick with something like fear. “Something’s wrong. That’s… that’s not supposed to happen. Twice. And it’s still… it’s like it’s not even mine.”
“Shhh,” she soothed, running a hand through his damp hair. Her mind was racing, juxtaposing Brenda’s clinical warnings with the overwhelming physical reality pinning her to the bed. She felt a cold trickle of fear beneath her own sated warmth. But a darker, more desperate part of her thrilled at the sheer mechanical proof of it. He was a statue of want. Her secret had made him perfect. “It feels incredible. You feel incredible. Just… go with it.”
He was quiet for a long moment, listening to his own ragged breath. Then, slowly, he began to move again. This time it was slower, deeper, a testing exploration of this new, relentless condition. He seemed fascinated by it, by the lack of a refractory period, by the obscene durability of his own body. A shaky, disbelieving laugh huffed out of him. “This is insane.”
“I know,” she said, kissing his shoulder, tasting salt. She closed her eyes. The tingling from the gel had subsided into a deep, bruised ache that was its own kind of pleasure. She focused on the feeling of him, the unfamiliar, unyielding fullness. This was what she’d wanted.
But as he moved inside her with a steady, untiring purpose, a single, clear image invaded the bliss: Brenda’s pale, freckled face in the salon break room, her voice low and severe. Permanently.
The word echoed in the rhythm of his thrusts. A final, cold stone dropped into the warm pool of her satisfaction. What had she ordered? What had she truly, unknowingly asked for? She held him tighter, as if she could keep the consequences at bay through sheer force of will.