Chapter 17: Morning Hunger
I woke to the low, resonant thrum of a snore. My cheek was pressed against warm skin, the scent of salt and sleep filling my nostrils. My arm was draped over a solid ribcage, my hand splayed on a sternum that rose and fell with a steady, infuriating peace.
Disorientation was a cold splash. Then memory flooded the hollows of Sabrina’s skull, viscous and dark.
The first conscious sensation was the dull, deep ache. It resided in my core, a used, stretched feeling that was more memory than pain, a phantom limb of violation that throbbed in time with my heartbeat. My lower back felt stiff, muscles I’d never used before complaining from being held in submission for so long.
Then, a new pressure. Against my lower belly, just below the navel ring. A firm, insistent heat.
My own body betrayed me before my mind could fully engage. Sabrina’s hips, of their own volition, made a slow, grinding shift forward, seeking closer contact. The movement pressed the softness of my stomach and the thatch of pubic hair against the hardness. A jolt, hot and liquid, shot through my groin. It was an echo from hours before, a nerve pathway that had been brutally carved and now lit up at the slightest provocation.
No.
My mind formed the word, but my body wasn’t listening. A low, unconscious sound hummed in my throat. My lips, which were resting against the ridge of Mateo’s hip, parted. A puff of my breath warmed his skin. My hand, the one on his chest, began to slide down, tracing the line of coarse hair that led from his navel down into the tangled sheets.
I watched it happen from somewhere behind my own eyes. A passenger. A prisoner.
My fingers found him. He was half-hard, swelling to full stiffness under my tentative, traitorous touch. The skin was like heated silk over iron. My palm closed around him. The fit was instinctively correct, a knowing, automatic grip. My thumb brushed the moist tip, and a fresh wave of that unwanted, slippery heat gathered between my own legs. The sensation was so acute, so localized, it was like a second heartbeat down there.
He stirred. The snore caught. A grunt.
My hand froze, but didn’t let go. I held my breath, hoping absurdly he would fall back asleep, that this automatic, humiliating pantomime would stop.
His hand came down, not on my hand, but on the back of my head. His fingers tangled in my short pink hair, not gently. “Mornin’,” he rasped, his voice graveled with sleep.
He pulled my head up and forward. I had no strength to resist. My body was pliant, loose from sleep and residual shock. My lips met the hot skin of his stomach. He guided my head lower.
“C’mon,” he muttered, a sleepy command. “You know what to do.”
Tears welled, blurring the tan line on his hip. My mind screamed a torrent of no, of stop, of this isn’t me. But the scream was muffled, buried under layers of fleshy compliance. My mouth watered. A deep, shameful part of this alien physiology was interested. The scent of him, musky and intimate, filled my head. My tongue darted out, a reflexive wet line against his skin.
That’s all it took.
With a groan, he shifted, using his grip in my hair to maneuver me. The world tilted. He rolled onto his back, pulling me up and over him until I was straddling his waist. The sheets fell away. Morning light, slicing through a gap in the cheap floral curtains, illuminated the dust motes and the stark reality of our bodies. My breasts, heavy and sensitive, hung down. His hands came up to grope them, his thumbs rough on my nipples. The contact was a electric shock of oversensitivity, making me gasp.
“There you go,” he said, looking up at me with heavy-lidded eyes. He looked past my eyes, past the person trapped inside. He saw Sabrina, a willing vessel, bleary-eyed and compliant.
He reached between us, positioned himself. The blunt head nudged at my entrance, which was already shamefully wet, ready. My body had prepared itself again. Overnight. Without my consent.
“Ride me,” he said. It wasn’t a request.
He guided my hips down.
The penetration was different this time. Slower. Deeper. Because I was lowering myself onto him, I felt every millimeter of surrender. The stretch was a burning fullness that made my eyes roll back. I cried out, a short, sharp sound.
“Yeah,” he encouraged, his hands settling on my hips, his fingers digging into the soft flesh of my ass. “Take it all.”
And I did. I sank down until our bodies were flush, until I could feel the coarse hair of his pelvis against my own. The feeling of being impaled, so completely, so intimately, short-circuited coherent thought. I was a sheath. A container.
He began to move my hips for me, setting a slow, grinding rhythm. Up, then down, with a slight circular twist at the bottom that made stars burst behind my eyelids. The friction was everywhere. It stroked places inside me that had no name in my old world. A tension began to coil in my belly, independent of my horror. It was a mechanical winding, a spring being tightened by the relentless, piston-like motion.
My hands came to rest on his chest for balance. I could feel his heartbeat under my palms. My own breaths came in ragged pants. The sounds filled the room—skin on skin, the creak of the bed, his low grunts, my helpless whimpers.
“Look at you,” he breathed, a smirk on his face. “Fuckin’ perfect.”
The shame was a physical burn on my face and neck. But beneath it, the coil tightened further. A treacherous warmth was spreading from my core, a pooling pleasure that fought against my revulsion. It was a war between biology and identity, and biology was winning, drowning my protests in a flood of endogenous chemicals.
My movements became less his direction and more my own. A desperate, seeking rhythm. I was chasing the sensation, even as my soul recoiled. The ache transformed, sharpening into a need so acute it felt like panic.
His hands slid from my hips to my ass, gripping, encouraging, slapping the flesh lightly. “That’s it. Get yours.”
The coil snapped.
It wasn’t like anything I had ever known. It was a rupture, a seismic event contained within the basin of Sabrina’s pelvis. It ripped through me in violent, clenching waves, squeezing around his invading flesh. A sound tore from my throat, raw and broken, not a scream of pleasure but a sob of utter defeat. My vision whited out. My body arched backward, back bowing, breasts thrust toward the ceiling, as the convulsions owned me completely.
Through the haze, I felt his own climax hit. His fingers dug into me hard enough to bruise, his hips bucked upward, driving him even deeper as he pulsed inside me with a final, possessive groan.
The tremors subsided slowly, leaving me hollow and trembling. I collapsed forward onto his chest, a marionette with cut strings. My face was wet with sweat and tears. The smell of sex was overwhelming.
We lay there, stuck together, for a long time. The hum of the TV, still on mute, was the only sound. My mind was a blank, scorched plain.
Eventually, he patted my ass, a dismissive, friendly slap. “Good morning,” he said, his voice full of smug satisfaction.
He shifted, pushing me off to the side. The separation was a cold, empty shock. He swung his legs out of bed and stood, stretching, utterly at ease in his own skin. He walked naked to the bathroom without a backward glance.
I lay on the damp sheets, curled into a fetal position. The physical sensations were retreating, leaving a profound, echoing emptiness in their wake. The adventure I’d wanted, the connection I’d craved with Andrea, felt like a sick joke from a lifetime ago. I wasn’t Justin anymore. Justin would have been disgusted, furious, broken.
I was just this. This used, aching body on a stained sheet in a sun-bleached room. The pink hair on the pillow wasn’t a style. It was a flag of surrender. And as I heard the shower start to run, I knew with a cold, certain dread that the day had just begun, and I had no idea how to move this flesh through it.