Chapter 29: The Morning Ritual
The door clicked shut behind her, sealing her in the dark. Chris didn’t turn on a light. The room smelled of him—clean sweat, cheap soap, the faint, musky residue of sex from earlier. And sleep. It was the smell of his private world.
He didn’t help her up. He walked to his bed and sat on the edge, the mattress complaining. He just watched her, a shape in the deeper dark.
“Get over here.”
Her limbs were clumsy. She crawled the short distance across the worn carpet, stopping at his feet. Her cheek rested against his knee. The cotton of his sweatpants was soft. She could feel the heat of him, the heavy stillness. She was trembling.
His hand came down, not to caress, but to take a fistful of her short, blonde hair. He pulled her head back, forcing her to look up at him. His face was in shadow.
“You begged at my door,” he said, his voice low. “You said ‘please.’ You said you’d do anything.”
“Yes.”
“What do you want?”
Her mind emptied. All the clever words, the theories, the defenses, were just ash. Only one truth remained, ugly and absolute. “Your cock. I want you to fuck me with it. I want you to… to ruin me with it. Again.”
He was silent for a long moment, his grip in her hair unwavering. “Annika was in your room.”
It wasn’t a question. A fresh wave of shame, hotter than before, washed over her. He knew. Of course he knew. The walls were thin. He’d probably heard every choked gasp, every wet sound.
“She… I didn’t—”
“She made you come,” he stated, his thumb stroking her scalp almost thoughtfully. “She gave you what I told you you couldn’t have. You stole from me. Again.”
“I’m sorry.” The apology was a whimper. “I couldn’t… I couldn’t stop her.”
“Couldn’t you?” He released her hair. His hand moved to the waistband of his sweatpants. He pushed them down, just enough. His cock, even soft, was a substantial weight in the dim light. It thickened as she stared, filling out, rising against his stomach. It was a pale, blunt instrument in the darkness. The memory of its invasion was a physical ache in her bones. “You don’t get to come from my cock tonight. You understand the rules? You broke them.”
“I understand.” She was already leaning forward, drawn by a gravity stronger than shame.
“But you asked so pretty,” he murmured. He wrapped his hand around the base, guiding the swollen tip to her lips. It was warm, the skin like velvet over iron. It brushed her mouth, smearing a bead of pre-cum across her lower lip. “You can have this. For a little while. Open.”
She opened her mouth, taking him in. He was too big. He always would be. Her jaw stretched, her lips strained around the girth. She tasted salt and skin. He let her set the pace at first, and she bobbed her head, hollowing her cheeks, trying to take more. She gagged. Tears welled in her eyes. She pushed through, wanting to prove she could take it, that she was worthy of it.
He let her struggle for a minute. Then his hand returned to her hair, fisting tightly. He held her still and pushed forward, fucking her mouth in short, sharp thrusts. “Deep. Take it deep, Conzi.”
She choked, saliva dripping down her chin. Her nose pressed into the coarse hair at his base. He held her there, impaled, until her throat spasmed around him. Then he pulled back, letting her gasp for air.
“Good,” he grunted. “Now get naked. On the bed. On your back.”
She scrambled to obey, her fingers fumbling with her clothes. The t-shirt, the pajama bottoms. They pooled on the floor. The air in the room was cool on her naked skin. She lay back on his sheets. They smelled like him. She stared at the ceiling, listening to him stand, hearing the rustle as he shed his sweatpants completely.
He loomed over her, a mountain of shadow. He didn’t kiss her. He didn’t touch her breasts. He kneeled between her legs, spreading her thighs with his knees. His hands gripped her hips, his fingers digging in. He positioned himself, the broad, slick head of his cock nudging against her entrance.
She was so wet it was a mortifying flood. She heard it. She felt the chill of air on the soaked skin of her inner thighs.
“Look at me,” he said.
She dragged her eyes from the ceiling to his face. His expression was intense, focused, but not cruel. It was matter-of-fact. This was a job. This was what he did.
He pushed in.
It was not like the kitchen table. That had been a surprise, a violent claiming. This was deliberate. This was execution. The initial stretch was a bright, blinding shock of fullness that stole her breath. He didn’t stop. He fed her his length in one relentless, slow press, burying himself to the hilt. Her body stretched to accommodate him, a burning, delicious ache that melted her muscles and her mind. A broken sigh whistled from her lips.
“Fuck,” he breathed, his own composure slipping for a second. “You’re still so goddamn tight.”
He began to move. Withdrawing almost completely, then driving back in. A slow, devastating rhythm. Each stroke rubbed his thickness against a spot inside her that sparked white behind her eyelids. It wasn’t pleasure. It was beyond pleasure. It was demolition. Her hips lifted to meet his, a desperate, involuntary reflex.
“You want it harder?” His voice was strained.
“Yes. Please. Harder.”
He changed his angle, planting his hands on either side of her head. His pace quickened. The slow, deep rolls became powerful, piston-like thrusts. The bed began to thump rhythmically against the wall. Thump. Thump. Thump. She knew the others would hear. Nat. Elia. She didn’t care. Let them hear. Let them know what was happening to her.
“You’re just a hole,” he growled, his breath hot on her face. “A warm, tight hole for my cock. That’s all you are now. Say it.”
“I’m a hole,” she gasped, the words coming easily, truthfully. “I’m your hole.”
“My dumb slut.”
“Your dumb slut!” The confession was a scream as he hammered into her, hitting her cervix with a force that was almost painful. Almost. It tipped over into a brutal, mind-numbing crescendo. Her orgasm was ripped from her without permission, a convulsing, pulsing clamp around his invading shaft. It wasn’t the sharp peak Annika had given her. It was a deep, rolling quake that seemed to turn her bones to liquid. She sobbed, her body arching off the bed.
He kept fucking her through it, his rhythm never faltering, using her shaking, sensitive body for his own ends. “Yeah, take it. Milk my cock with that greedy cunt.”
She was babbling. Words without sense. Pleas, curses, worship. He was everywhere, in her, around her, the only solid thing in a universe of sensation. The smell of their sex filled the room, primal and thick.
His control finally snapped. His thrusts became erratic, brutally deep. A guttural groan tore from his chest. He shoved into her one last, final time and held there, his body tensing. She felt the hot, sudden pulse deep inside her as he came, flooding her. It was a claiming more profound than any word. She felt filled in a way that had nothing to do with physical dimensions.
He collapsed on top of her, his weight crushing, perfect. He was breathing hard into her neck. She held him, her arms wrapping around his broad back, her fingers tracing the lines of his shoulders. She was marked. Ruined. Complete.
He rolled off after a minute, lying beside her. The silence returned, but it was different now. It was saturated.
“You’re staying the night,” he said, his voice back to its usual casual tone. It wasn’t an invitation. “You’ll clean up in the morning. And you’ll make breakfast.”
“Okay.”
“And Annika doesn’t touch you again unless I say so.”
“Okay.”
He turned onto his side, his back to her. In minutes, his breathing evened out into sleep.
Conzi lay awake. The ache between her legs was a profound, throbbing souvenir. The wetness on her thighs was cooling. She was exhausted, hollowed out, and yet… peaceful. The frantic, clawing need was gone. It had been fucked out of her. For now.
The first grey light of dawn was fingering its way through the blinds when she heard it. A soft, distinct sound from the other side of the wall. Chris’s room shared a wall with Nat’s.
It was the sound of crying. Muffled, trying to be quiet, but unmistakable. Nat.
Conzi lay perfectly still, listening. Each hiccupping sob was a tiny punctuation in the silent apartment. She thought of Lucia’s stories, of Nat’s boyfriend Micha, of the small penis and the dissatisfaction. She thought of Nat hearing every thump, every cry, every guttural groan through the wall.
A slow, unfamiliar feeling uncurled in Conzi’s chest. It wasn’t pity. It was colder. Sharper. After everything that had been taken from her, after being reduced to a begging, sobbing mess, here was something she had that someone else wanted. Here was a pain that wasn’t hers.
She smiled in the dark. It was a thin, terrible smile.
She finally slept, and her dreams were empty and dark.