Chapter 13: New Development
The metallic taste was the first thing she noticed upon waking. It coated her tongue, thick and sour, like she’d been sucking on a penny all night. Eleanor opened her eyes to the familiar ceiling, the room bathed in the sickly, golden glow of the lamp David had never turned off. The other side of the bed was empty, cold. A note on his pillow read, Early department meeting. Love you.
Love. The word seemed to float, insubstantial as dust.
She sat up, and a dull, heavy ache pulled at her chest. Her breasts felt sore, weighed down. She looked down, her mind still gummed with sleep and the residual buzz of the pills. Her hands came up to cup them through her thin slept-in t-shirt. They were different. Fuller. Heavier. The soft flesh spilled over her palms in a way that was unmistakably new. A full cup size larger, at least. The nipples were dark, pebbled and hypersensitive even against the cotton.
A flash of memory—Mark’s mouth on her, Carol’s hands squeezing—and a bolt of pure, undiluted need shot from her chest down to her groin. Her cunt, already throbbing with a low-level hum, clenched around nothing. She was wet. Soaked. She could feel the slick heat gathering, a shameful leak onto the already-stained sheets.
David was gone. The house was silent.
The strap-on. The thought was a sharp pang of regret. She’d left the black silicone toy at Carol’s, in her frantic, confused escape. It felt like a catastrophic error now, a lifeboat set adrift. She needed to be filled. Stretched. Ruined. Her own fingers would be a pathetic substitute, but they were all she had.
She shoved the covers back. The air was cool on her skin as she pushed the t-shirt up, exposing her enlarged breasts to the faint light. They were pale, veins tracing faint blue roads beneath the skin, the areolas wider, darker. She pinched a nipple, rolling it between thumb and forefinger, and a jolt of electricity arced straight to her core. A low gasp escaped her. Her other hand slid down her stomach, over the soft curve of her belly, through the coarse hair, and found her slit.
She was drenched. Swollen. Her outer lips were puffy, and her inner labia, slick and dark, peeked out. She traced her opening, circling the clit, which was already hard as a little pebble. A single, smooth motion slid two fingers inside herself.
“Fuck,” she whispered to the empty room.
It was too easy. Her body welcomed the intrusion hungrily, but it was a vast, hungry space. Her fingers felt short, inadequate. She curled them, searching for the rough patch inside, and began to pump.
The rhythm was frantic, not sensual. This wasn’t pleasure-seeking; it was a desperate excavation. She fucked herself with her own hand, her breathing ragged, her eyes fixed on the wall but seeing nothing. The slap of wet skin, the crude squelch of her own arousal filled the silent bedroom. She thought of the strap-on, of Carol kneeling behind her, driving it in with powerful, relentless thrusts. She thought of Mark’s rough hands and indifferent gaze. She thought of David’s sleepy confusion.
Her orgasm built quickly, a tense coil in her lower belly. She rubbed her clit harder, fingers plunging deeper. “Come,” she gritted out.
It crashed over her, a sharp, surface-level rupture. Her back arched off the bed, a strangled cry caught in her throat. Muscles fluttered around her fingers in rapid, fading pulses. A little relief, a tiny drain of the frantic pressure.
But the hunger didn’t break. It yawned wider, angry at being teased.
She didn’t stop. Her fingers, slick with her own come, kept moving, slower now, exploring the newfound, shocking capacity of her own body. She added a third finger. It slid in with startling ease, stretching her, a burn that made her hiss through her teeth. This was better. Fuller. She pumped all three fingers in and out, the sound wetter, louder.
“That’s it,” she mumbled, lost in the crude mechanics of it.
The second orgasm was different—deeper, a rolling wave that started in her gut and radiated outward, leaving her thighs trembling. She moaned, long and low, her head thrashing side to side on the pillow. For a few seconds, the hollow feeling was gone, replaced by a molten fullness.
It faded. The emptiness rushed back in, a vacuum.
“No,” she whimpered. “Not enough.”
Her hand was cramping, but she couldn’t stop. She was a machine now, a vessel designed only for this futile attempt at satisfaction. She fucked herself with a brutal, punishing rhythm, chasing the ghost of the last climax. The room smelled of sex and sweat and that faint, persistent metallic tang. Her breasts ached with each jarring movement.
A third peak gathered, this one less sharp, more exhausting. It washed through her like a warm, sickly tide, leaving her gasping, spent, her hand finally stilling, buried inside her up to the knuckle.
Silence.
She pulled her fingers out. They glistened in the lamplight. She was still wet. Still hungry. The profound, aching need had softened to a persistent, dull throb, but it was there. It would always be there now. She let her hands fall to her sides, staring at the ceiling. The physical relief was a taunt. It had done nothing. She was a drained cup that still demanded to be filled.