Chapter 32: The Jealousy Game
The leash, a length of worn leather from an old dog harness, lay coiled on the coffee table like a dead snake. The air in the living room still felt charged, thick with the phantom scent of sweat and salt and humiliation.
Annika hadn’t moved from her spot on the futon. She stared at the leash, her jaw clenched so tight a muscle ticked in her pale cheek. Her toes, which Chris had licked with a slow, deliberate hunger, curled into the fabric of the cushion.
Bambi had fled to the bathroom the moment Nat dismissed them, her face flushed with a confusing mix of arousal and shame.
Nat was in the kitchen now, the sound of the tap running, glasses clinking. Normal sounds. As if the last half hour hadn’t happened.
Annika stood up abruptly. She walked past the kitchen without a glance, down the short hall to Chris’s door. She didn’t knock. She just went in.
He was pulling a fresh t-shirt over his head. The room smelled like him—clean laundry, deodorant, and underneath it, the faint, musky trace of what Nat had done. He turned, surprised.
“Hey,” he said, his voice careful.
Annika closed the door. She leaned back against it, her arms crossed over her chest. She was still in the tiny shorts and camisole she’d been wearing when Nat brought out the leash.
“You liked it,” she said flatly.
Chris didn’t pretend to misunderstand. He sat on the edge of his bed, running a hand through his hair. “It was… intense.”
“Don’t give me that bullshit. You were fucking loving it. Kneeling there. Licking my feet while she jerked you off with her eyes. You were harder than I’ve ever seen you.” Her voice was a low, furious tremor. “I used to be the one who made you look like that.”
He looked up at her then, and his easy charm was gone, stripped away. What was left was something older, wearier. “It’s different with her.”
“Why? Because she’s a bitch? Because she treats you like a toy she can humiliate in front of people?” Annika pushed off the door, taking a step into the room. “I heard you begging her. ‘Please, Nat, let me fuck you.’ It was pathetic.”
A flicker of something dark crossed his face. “You don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“I know she sent you to your room with blue balls. I know you’re still aching.” She stopped in front of him, looking down. “I know you.”
She saw his gaze drop to the front of her shorts. He swallowed.
“Annika…”
“Shut up.” She hooked her thumbs in the waistband of her shorts and pushed them down, stepping out of them. She wasn’t wearing anything underneath. Her pale skin seemed to glow in the dim room. “You want to fuck someone? Fuck me. Right now. No games. No leash. Just prove you’re not her fucking pet.”
For a long moment, he didn’t move. He just looked at her, at the smooth plane of her stomach, the dark triangle of hair between her legs. She saw the conflict in his eyes—the residual obedience to Nat’s denial warring with a deeper, more instinctive hunger.
He reached out, his fingers brushing the inside of her thigh. A jolt went through her.
“Lie down,” he said, his voice rough.
It wasn’t a submission. It was a command. A different kind of power.
She lay back on his bed, the cheap cotton of his sheets cool against her skin. He stood and shed his pants. His cock sprang free, still thick and heavy from earlier, the head dark and wet. He didn’t kneel. He climbed over her, bracing his weight on his arms, caging her in.
“You think this is about you saving me?” he murmured, his face inches from hers. His breath was hot. “This is about you needing it just as bad as I do. You needed to see me on my knees so you could come up here and feel like you own me instead.”
He didn’t wait for a reply. He pushed her legs apart with his knee, not gently. He guided himself to her entrance, the blunt pressure undeniable. He didn’t ask if she was ready. He just shoved himself inside in one relentless, deep thrust.
Annika cried out, a sharp, shocked sound that was swallowed by the room. He filled her completely, a brutal, stretching invasion that burned in the best way. He was bigger than she remembered, or maybe she’d just forgotten the sheer, overwhelming reality of him.
“Is this what you wanted?” he grunted, pulling back and driving in again, hard enough to shift her up the bed. “To feel how hard I am after she worked me over? You want to taste her on me?”
He fucked her with a punishing, rhythmic intensity. No playful teasing, no lazy exploration. This was raw release. Each thrust bottomed out inside her, the slap of skin echoing off the walls. She could feel every thick inch, the drag of his veins against her sensitive walls. She wrapped her legs around his waist, heels digging into his ass, pulling him deeper.
“Yes,” she hissed, her fingers clawing at his back. “Fuck, yes, Chris. Give it to me. All of it.”
He leaned down, capturing her mouth in a kiss that was more like a bite. She could taste the faint salt of her own skin from his earlier attention. His hips never stopped moving, a relentless piston that was quickly driving her toward the edge. The humiliation, the jealousy, it all melted into a white-hot need. She was coming, her body seizing around him in ragged, pulsing waves.
He tore his mouth from hers. “You come on my cock like it’s yours,” he snarled against her neck. “But it’s not. It’s never been yours. You understand?”
He punctuated each word with a brutal thrust. She was over-sensitized, wrung out, but the dark thrill in his words sent a new shock through her.
“Who does it belong to?” he demanded, his pace becoming erratic, frantic.
She couldn’t speak. She shook her head, her vision blurring.
“Say it.”
“Nat,” she gasped, the admission ripped from her.
That was what he needed. With a final, deep grind, he buried himself and came. She felt the hot, liquid rush flooding her insides, pulse after pulse, marking her. He collapsed on top of her, his weight a crushing, welcome anchor. They lay there, slick and tangled, breathing in ragged unison.
The sound of the dishwasher changing cycles echoed from the kitchen.
Slowly, he pulled out. He rolled onto his back beside her. The room was silent except for their breathing.
After a minute, Annika spoke to the ceiling. “She doesn’t know about Erna, does she?”
Chris was still. “No.”
“Does Micha?”
A longer pause. “No.”
Annika turned her head to look at him. His profile was sharp in the half-light. “You’re playing a dangerous game. With all of them.”
He turned his head to meet her gaze. The weariness was back, but so was that familiar, persuasive glint. “Aren’t we all?”
He reached over, his fingers tracing a faint red mark his stubble had left on her collarbone. The touch was oddly tender now. “This stays here. Between us.”
She didn’t agree. She didn’t disagree. She just closed her eyes, the feel of him still leaking from between her legs, the ghost of the leash still hanging in the air of the apartment. A secret had just been cemented, but the foundation it was built on felt like shifting sand.