Chapter 37: The Red Eye Ritual
The plane touched down with a jolt and a screech of rubber, a violent return to the earth. The cabin lights blazed on, cruel and fluorescent. Channah peeled herself from Ryan’s shoulder, a line of saliva connecting her skin to his shirt for a second before it broke. Her body felt liquefied, used, profoundly sore. A deep, dull ache pulsed in her ass with every heartbeat. She was sticky with sweat and spent desire, the smell of sex and salted peanuts clinging to them both under the thin airline blanket.
A flight attendant moved down the aisle, her smile professional and glassy. “Welcome to Washington, D.C.”
Ryan’s hand found hers under the blanket, his grip tight. “My place is twenty minutes from here,” he said, his voice roughened by sleeplessness and stifled groans.
“Good.”
They moved through the airport in a daze, a bubble of intense privacy around them despite the morning crowds. Channah walked carefully, the memory of him moving inside her for hours echoing in her muscles. Every step was a reminder. She saw a woman in a business suit glance at her, then quickly away, and Channah wondered what she saw. A tired, middle-aged woman, perhaps. She had no idea that under the jeans, the flesh was tender, marked, that the woman’s cunt was slick and her asshole felt stretched and full even now.
Ryan’s loft was in a converted warehouse by the river. The space was vast, open, all exposed brick and steel beams, filled with books and a staggering view of the gray morning water. It was radically different from her cozy, curated New York apartment. It felt like him—intellectual, restless, slightly unfinished.
He dropped their bags inside the door. The silence here was different from the plane’s hum. It was a waiting silence.
“Coffee?” he asked.
“Later.”
She walked to the center of the main room, near a large, worn leather sofa. She turned to face him. The dawn light filtered through the industrial windows, painting everything in shades of ash and steel.
“I can still taste you,” she said. “In the back of my throat. I can still feel the shape of you in my ass when I move. It’s all I am right now.”
He crossed the space, stopping just before touching her. “What do you want, Channah?”
“I want you to fuck me in the bed of the man who spent twenty-five years thinking about me. I want you to ruin whatever peace you’ve made with this place.”
His kiss was hungry, immediate. It tasted of stale airplane air and her own essence. He walked her backwards towards the bedroom, a sparse room dominated by a large platform bed with rumpled gray linen. As they moved, their hands tore at clothes, not with the desperate rush of the store, but with a focused, relentless need. Fabric ripped. A button pinged against the floor.
Naked, they fell onto the bed. He rolled on top of her, his weight a glorious anchor. She hooked a leg around his hip, opening herself, but he resisted.
“No,” he murmured into her neck. “Not yet.”
He slid down her body, his hands spreading her thighs wide. He kissed the inside of her knee, the soft skin of her inner thigh. He nuzzled the coarse red hair at her apex, breathing her in. Then his mouth was on her, his tongue a broad, flat stroke through her soaked folds.
“Oh, Jesus,” she gasped, her head thrashing back.
He ate her with a single-minded devotion, licking and sucking, his stubble rough against her tender flesh. He pushed two fingers into her cunt, curling them, finding a rhythm that made her hips jerk off the bed. The orgasm built quickly, a tight coil in her belly—a response to hours of teasing, to the sheer overwhelming reality of being here, in his life.
“I’m gonna come,” she warned, her voice tight.
He sucked her clit into his mouth, hard, and flicked his tongue over it. The coil snapped. She came with a sharp, broken cry, her back arching, her cunt pulsing around his fingers. He rode it out, gentling his mouth, drinking her down as she shuddered.
Before the last tremor had faded, he was moving up her body. His cock, thick and heavy, pressed against her thigh. He was slick from her mouth, from the flight. She reached between them, guiding him.
But not to her cunt.
She angled him lower, to the already tender, used pucker of her ass.
“Here,” she demanded, her eyes blurry with tears from the climax. “Again. I want it sore. I want to feel it tomorrow.”
He pressed the head against her. She was looser than before, from the prolonged use on the plane, but still tight. The initial breach was a burning stretch that made her gasp. He pushed in steadily, a long, slow invasion that felt even more intimate than the first time. This wasn’t discovery. This was ownership.
“Fuck,” he groaned, his forehead dropping to hers. “You’re so fucking open for me.”
He began to move, long, deep strokes that pushed the air from her lungs. Each thrust was a blunt, claiming possession. The pain was a bright thread woven through the pleasure, inseparable from it. She wrapped her legs around his back, heels digging into his ass, pulling him deeper.
“Harder,” she begged, her nails scoring his shoulders. “Make it hurt. Make it so I can’t sit without thinking of your cock in my ass.”
He obliged, his pace turning punishing, the slap of skin echoing in the sparse room. The bedframe knocked a dull rhythm against the brick wall. She was mindless, reduced to a series of sensations: the brutal fullness, the heat of his skin, the raw sound of his breathing in her ear.
“You’re mine,” he growled, each word a puff of air against her sweat-slicked neck. “You were always mine. This ass is mine. This cunt is mine. Say it.”
“It’s yours,” she sobbed, the words torn from her. “My ass is your ass, Ryan, fuck, please…”
His control shattered. His thrusts lost rhythm, becoming frantic, final. He drove into her one last time, burying himself to the hilt, and held there. A hot, deep pulse flooded her insides as he came, a wet, claiming heat. She felt it, a visceral sign of his possession. She came again, a secondary, clenching shockwave that milked him, her body accepting every last drop.
He collapsed, careful to keep his weight on his elbows. They were both breathing in ragged, open-mouthed gasps. He didn’t pull out. They stayed fused, spent.
Minutes later, he shifted, softening, slipping from her body with a faint, wet sound. He rolled to the side, pulling her with him, tucking her back against his chest. The comforter was half on the floor. They were slick and tangled.
Outside, the city was fully awake. The sun had broken through the clouds, casting a hard light across the floor. A tugboat sounded on the river.
“I have a session at three,” she said quietly, her voice hoarse. “A video call. A young woman with anxiety.”
He laughed, a shocked, breathy sound. “Jesus, Channah.”
“I’ll have to sit very still. I’ll have to wear a dress. Nothing with a waistband.”
He kissed her shoulder. “Cancel it.”
“I can’t.” She paused. “This was a Tuesday for me. A regular Tuesday.”
“It’s not a regular Tuesday anymore.”
She knew that. The knowledge was a stone in her gut. This wasn’t a conclusion. It was a fracture. The careful life she’d built—the therapy practice, the routines, the composed solitude—was now cracked, and this man, this feeling, was seeping through the fissures.
She turned in his arms to face him. His brown hair was wild, his eyes tired but clearer than she’d ever seen them. She touched his face, tracing the lines she remembered from when they were smooth.
“What happens after your coffee?” she asked.
He looked at her, his gaze unwavering. “I don’t know. But you’re not getting on a plane today.”
It wasn’t a solution. It was a stay of execution. A chance to breathe in the ruins. She nodded, accepting it, and let her head fall back to his chest, listening to the strong, steady beat of his heart beneath her ear, a counter-rhythm to the distant sound of the city carrying on, oblivious.