Chapter 9: The Aftermath and a New Routine
The first thing she felt was the heat. A solid, living warmth pressed against her back and her front, enveloping her. Then, the ache. A deep, radiating soreness that seemed to originate from her very center and pulse outward with every faint heartbeat.
Nia opened her eyes.
The room was dark, the heavy velvet curtains blocking the early morning sun. She was in the center of the enormous bed. Trez’s massive form was curled behind her, one heavy arm thrown possessively over her waist. Jax was facing her, his breathing even in sleep, his forehead nearly touching hers.
The memories crashed in, not as images but as physical echoes. The stretch. The splitting fullness. The helpless, gushing release. Her pussy clenched involuntarily around nothing, and the empty throb it produced was a cruel taunt.
She tried to slip out from under Trez’s arm. His hand tightened instantly, his fingers splaying across her belly. He wasn’t asleep.
“Going somewhere, baby girl?” His voice was a sleep-roughened rumble against her spine.
“I… I have to go home.” Her own voice was a scratchy whisper.
“This is home now,” Jax murmured, his eyes still closed. “For your pussy, anyway.”
A hot shame flushed through her. “No. I have a home. I have Cam.”
Trez shifted, rising up on one elbow. He looked down at her, his expression unreadable in the gloom. “Cam. Right. The boy.” He traced a finger along her jawline. “You think you can go back to him? After last night? After taking both of us at once?”
“I have to try.” The words felt like ash in her mouth. “I love him.”
Trez was silent for a long moment. He exchanged a look with Jax, who had now opened his eyes, watching with lazy interest. Then Trez surprised her. He sighed, a sound of exaggerated resignation, and removed his arm.
“Okay.”
Nia froze. “What?”
“Okay,” Trez repeated, sitting up. The sheet pooled around his waist. “If that’s what you truly want. Get dressed. Go back to your little boyfriend.”
Jax propped himself up on his elbows. “Dad?”
Trez held up a hand, silencing his son without looking at him. His gaze was fixed on Nia. “It’s her choice. She wants to settle for a sip of water when she’s tasted the whole ocean? That’s on her.” He leaned in close, his voice dropping. “But you remember the taste of the ocean, Nia. You remember what it feels like to drown in it.”
She scrambled from the bed, her legs shaky. She found her torn dress on the floor, holding it against her nakedness. She didn’t look at them as she hurried into the connected bathroom, her face burning.
The shower was a monsoon-style head. She turned it as hot as she could stand, scrubbing her skin raw with a bar of sandalwood soap. She watched the water swirl at her feet, hoping it would carry the scent of them, the feel of them, down the drain. She avoided looking directly at her body in the steamy mirror, but glimpses showed darkening fingerprints on her hips, the inner tenderness of her thighs.
When she came out, hair damp and wearing her wrinkled, insufficient dress, the bedroom was empty. She almost wept with relief. She fled the mansion, the morning air cool and shockingly clean against her skin. The walk of shame to her car felt like a mile.
Her own small apartment, shared with a roommate who was gone for the weekend, was eerily quiet. Sunlight streamed through the lace curtains her mother had given her. Everything was in its place: her Bible on the nightstand, a framed photo of her and Cam at the fall festival, a pile of textbooks for her community college classes.
It was a life that now felt like a museum exhibit. Something she was looking at through glass.
She texted Cam: Hey, sorry I was MIA. My phone died. You okay?
His reply was almost instant: Worried about u! All good here. Come over? I missed u.
Guilt, sharp and acidic, sliced through her. Can’t, just got home. Need to study. Tomorrow? She needed time. Time for the marks to fade. Time for the hollow feeling inside her to close up.
Ok. Love u.
Love you too.
She slept for fourteen hours straight, a dead, dreamless sleep. When she woke, it was Sunday afternoon. Her body still ached, but it was a duller throb now. She told herself it was over. A terrible, secret mistake. A sin she would confess in the vague, anonymous way she’d confessed things before. Forgive me, Father, for I have lusted.
She went to Cam’s apartment that evening. He pulled her into a hug, his familiar scent of laundry detergent and mild cologne enveloping her. She stiffened for a fraction of a second before forcing herself to melt into it.
“You sure you’re okay?” he asked, pulling back to search her face.
“Just tired,” she said, forcing a smile.
They ordered pizza. They watched a movie. His hand on her knee felt warm, gentle. Normal. She focused on that. This was her reality. This kindness. This safety.
When he kissed her, it was sweet. When his hands moved under her shirt, it was with a reverent slowness she used to adore. But her skin felt deaf. His touches were whispers against a memory of a roar.
In his narrow bed, as he moved above her, she wrapped her legs around him and tried to lose herself. He felt good. He was her Cam. He was careful, attentive, loving. But the entire time, her body was playing a treacherous, comparative game. The stretch was pleasant, but it was a familiar path, not a shocking conquest. The fullness was warm, but it didn’t reach the desperate, mind-breaking depths she now knew existed. She climaxed, a quiet, polite tightening that felt like a distant cousin to the catastrophic eruptions that had left her sobbing.
Afterward, he held her, nuzzling her hair. “I love you so much, Nia.”
“I love you too, Cam.”
She meant it. She did. But the words echoed in a new hollow space inside her.
As she drifted off, Cam’s voice, sleepy and confused, murmured against her shoulder. “You feel different.”
Her eyes snapped open in the dark. “What?”
“I don’t know. Just… deeper or something.” He chuckled, half-asleep. “Maybe I’m just imagining it.”
She lay frozen, staring at the ceiling. She could feel it too. Not just in her soul, but in her flesh. A literal, physical change. An emptiness that his loving, ten-inch cock could no longer fill. It wasn’t imagination. It was ruin.
And in the quiet of Cam’s bedroom, the memory of Trez’s voice was clearer than Cam’s breathing beside her. You remember the taste of the ocean.
Back at the mansion, Trez poured two glasses of bourbon. He handed one to Jax.
“You just let her walk out,” Jax said, swirling the amber liquid. He was still in a towel from the gym, muscles gleaming under the low library lights. “After all that. I don’t get it.”
Trez took a slow sip, savoring the burn. “You ever break a horse, son?”
“What?”
“A wild horse. You don’t just keep it in the stall. You let it think it’s free. You let it run back to its field. It’ll pace at the fence line. It’ll remember the grain you fed it, the firm hand on its flank. It’ll start to hate the bland grass on its side. The emptiness of its own freedom.” He set his glass down with a soft click. “She’s at that fence line right now. Thinking of our grain. Feeling that emptiness.”
Jax frowned. “So what now?”
“Now,” Trez said, a slow, predatorial smile spreading across his face, “we wait for the hunger to get painful. Then we make sure we’re there when she breaks. Next time she’s with Cam… we pay them a visit.”