Chapter 22: Public Ass to Mouth and Facial
The morning light was a brutal accountant. It tallied the years in the fine lines at the corners of Channah’s eyes as she slept, measured the silver threads in Ryan’s unkempt hair sprawled across her pillow. It illuminated the evidence they’d left on the rumpled sheets, the purpling mark on her hip, the empty wine glasses from two nights before still sitting sentinel on the nightstand.
Ryan woke first, the familiar disorientation of a strange room giving way to a profound, aching recognition. Her scent was on his skin. Her breath, soft and regular, warmed his chest. For a long time, he just watched her sleep, the way her eyelashes fluttered, the slight part of her lips. The composed therapist was gone; in her place was a woman exhausted, sated, vulnerable.
Her eyes opened. They focused on him, and he watched the brief flash of panic—the professional’s horror at being seen so unraveled—before it melted into a weary acceptance.
“Hi,” she said, her voice sleep-roughened.
“Hi.”
They didn’t move. The city’s morning symphony began below—sirens, garbage trucks, the distant rumble of the subway.
“My ass is sore,” she stated plainly.
He laughed, a quiet, rusty sound. “I did warn you.”
“You did no such thing.” A small smile touched her lips. She shifted, wincing slightly. “Worth it.”
The simplicity of the statement hung between them. He traced a finger along her shoulder, over a faint, old scar he didn’t recognize. “What now, Channah?”
She sat up, pulling the sheet with her, covering her breasts not out of modesty but as if suddenly cold. The red hair tumbled in a chaotic cascade down her back. “Now, we see. We talk. We see if the people we are can stand the people we were.”
“That sounds like therapist talk.”
“It’s survivor talk,” she corrected, turning to look at him. “You left. I stayed. We both built lives on the fault line of that. I need to know if you’re just here for the tectonic shift, or if you’re here to survey the damage with me.”
He sat up beside her. “I’m not here for nostalgia. That’s a poison. I’m here because for twenty years, every conversation, every connection, felt like I was speaking a second language. I was fluent in it, functional, even loved. But it was translation. With you…” He looked at his hands, the ink on his knuckles. “With you, it’s my mother tongue.”
She closed her eyes, absorbing the blow of his words. When she opened them, they were bright. “We should get up. I’m starving. And I need coffee before I can handle any more devastatingly perfect metaphors.”
The domesticity that followed was a strange, tender experiment. She loaned him a bathrobe, a ridiculous silk kimono that strained across his shoulders. They moved around her kitchen, a dance of avoiding and accidentally brushing past. He found the coffee. She pulled eggs and chives from the fridge. The silence was not uncomfortable, but charged, every clink of a spoon a potential question.
They ate at her small breakfast table, sunlight streaming in. He watched her lick a spot of yogurt from her thumb, and the simple act was erotic, a reminder of the night before.
“Tell me something true,” she said, putting her spoon down. “Something from the years in between. Not the big stuff. A small truth.”
He thought. “I quit smoking. Then started again. Then quit for good when I found a lump in my chest. It was just a cyst. But for three days, I was certain I was dying, and my only thought was ‘I never got to apologize to Channah.’ Not ‘I never had kids’ or ‘I never wrote the great novel.’ Just that.”
She stared into her coffee. “My small truth,” she said softly. “I read your book. The one on post-colonial narratives. I hated it. It was brilliant, and I hated every page because your voice was in my head for weeks after. It felt like you were in the room, arguing with me.”
A slow smile spread across his face. “You’re the only person who ever said they hated it. Everyone else just said it was ‘challenging.’”
“It was. You were.” She reached across the table, her fingers covering his. The touch was electric, a circuit completed. “I don’t know how to do this, Ryan. Casual wasn’t ever our problem. It’s the sustained thing. The day after. And the day after that.”
He turned his hand over, lacing his fingers with hers. “We could start with today. Right now.”
He stood, pulling her up. The kimono slipped from her shoulders, pooling at her feet. He led her, naked, back to the bedroom, but not to the bed. He sat on the edge of it and drew her to stand before him. The morning light gilded her pale skin, her full breasts, the soft curve of her stomach. He leaned forward and pressed his mouth to the bruise on her hip, a soft kiss of apology and possession.
Then he looked up, his gaze dark. “I want to taste you. All of you. Until you can’t remember any language but this one.”
She understood. A shudder of anticipation went through her. She moved onto the bed, positioning herself above him, her knees on either side of his head. He guided her down, his hands on her thighs, until she was hovering over his mouth. He could smell her, musky and deep from their night, clean from the shower. He licked a slow, broad stripe from her clit to her asshole, tasting her essential salt.
She cried out, her hands fisting in the duvet. He did it again, slower, more deliberately, his tongue exploring her folds, delving inside her cunt before circling back to tease the tight, forbidden knot of her ass. He was claiming territory, mapping her with a devotional precision.
“Oh, fuck, Ryan,” she gasped, her hips moving against his face.
He gripped her thighs, holding her steady as he feasted on her. He licked and sucked her clit until her legs trembled, then soothed her with soft kisses to her inner thighs. He pushed his tongue against her asshole, feeling her gasp, feeling the muscle yield slightly.
“I need you,” she begged, her voice broken. “In my mouth. I need to taste us together.”
They shifted in a clumsy, desperate ballet. She turned, lowering herself so her cunt was poised above his mouth once more, while she took his hard, thick cock into her own. The 69 was an act of mutual drowning. He groaned against her, the vibration making her shriek as she took him deep into her throat, her nose pressed into his pubic hair. She could taste herself on him, a potent, circular flavor.
He fucked her face with gentle thrusts of his hips while his tongue plunged into her cunt, then rimmed her ass with a relentless focus. The world narrowed to the sounds of wetness, gagging, desperate moans muffled by flesh. She came first, a violent, shaking orgasm that ripped through her, her cries stifled by his cock surging in her throat. He followed seconds later, his own shout buried in her flesh as he erupted, jet after jet of hot cum hitting the back of her tongue.
She swallowed convulsively, milking him with her throat, taking every drop until he was soft and spent. They collapsed sideways onto the bed, a tangled, breathless heap of limbs, their bodies glistening with sweat and spit and come.
They lay like that, breathing the same air, for a long time. Her head was on his chest.
“The therapist in me is screaming that this is avoidance,” she whispered against his skin. “Using sex to bypass the conversation.”
He stroked her hair. “The professor in me argues it is the conversation. A more honest one.”
She propped herself up on an elbow, looking down at him. Her lip was swollen. “What do we do after the coffee wears off? After the bruise fades?”
He met her gaze. “We have lunch. We walk. We argue about my book. We see if we can stand each other in the daylight, without the excuse of history or the anesthetic of lust.”
“And if we can’t?”
“Then we have tonight,” he said simply. “And we’ll have said more to each other with our bodies than most people manage in a lifetime of words.”
She nodded, a slow, accepting gesture. Then she lowered her head and kissed him, a deep, slow kiss that tasted of salt and futures and unresolved things. Outside, the city moved on, indifferent. But in her sunlit room, for now, the tectonic plates held steady.