Chapter 41: The Second Day Begins
The shower had been a lukewarm, perfunctory affair. They’d washed each other with a strange, quiet tenderness, soap slipping over bruises sucked into skin, fingertips tracing the outlines of teeth marks. The spray couldn’t erase the feeling. It was in her bones, a deep, pleasurable ache in her ass, a raw tenderness between her legs. It was in the way he looked at her, not at her face, but at the water sluicing over the curves of her breasts, her belly, her thighs, with a possession that was both new and ancient.
Now, sprawled on the ruined bed, the damp from their bodies seeping into the silk, the room smelled different.Less of lavender, more of them. Of wet skin and sex and the stale, sweet scent of the half-finished glass of Merlot on her nightstand. The afternoon sun, fierce and low, stabbed through a gap in the velvet drapes, cutting a bright blade across the rumpled duvet, illuminating dancing motes of dust and the faint, shimmering trace of a cobweb in the high corner.
Channah watched the light play on Ryan’s chest, on the dark ink of his tattoos. Her head was pillowed on his shoulder, her red hair splayed damp across his skin. Her hand rested on his sternum, feeling the steady, slowing beat of his heart.
“My clients,” she said, her voice hoarse.“Mrs.Alder today. She’s finally talking about the affair her husband doesn’t know she knows about.”
“Mm.” His fingers traced idle circles on her damp back. “And I’ve got a seminar on Byzantine iconography. A bunch of hungover seniors arguing about whether the light in a mosaic is divine or just clever tile work.”
They lay in silence for a long moment, the responsibilities of their other lives hovering in the air like ghosts.
“Fuck ’em,” Ryan said, softly.A laugh bubbled up in her chest, surprising her. It felt good.“Yeah.”
She rolled onto him, her full weight settling over his hips. He was already half-hard beneath her, responding to the simple press of her body. She looked down at his face, at the fine lines at the corners of his eyes, the streak of gray in his temple she hadn’t noticed in the dim lamplight of the night before.
“I’m not done,” she whispered.“I know.”
She shifted back, lifting herself until she knelt over his face. The air was cool on her wet cunt.He didn’t need to be asked. His hands came up, gripping the fleshy swell of her ass, his thumbs digging into the crease. He pulled her down.His mouth was hotter than she remembered. His tongue wasn’t tentative or exploring.It knew its way. It speared into her, lapping at her juices, broad and flat and demanding.She gasped, bracing her hands on the headboard behind him. He ate her with a single-minded focus, his nose buried in her, his tongue working her clit in tight, relentless circles. Then he dragged it lower, pressing against the pucker of her asshole, still loose and sensitive from his earlier fucking. The dual sensation—the rough, flicking attention on her clit and the blunt, intrusive pressure against her other hole—made her cry out, a short, sharp sound.
“Oh, god, right there, don’t stop.”
He didn’t. He slid two fingers into her pussy, curling them, fucking her with his hand while his mouth worked her clit.The rhythm was obscene, wet, sloppy. She could hear him grunting beneath her, feel the vibration against her most sensitive flesh. Her own hips began to piston, grinding herself against his face, fucking his mouth in a frantic, rising rhythm. The orgasm wasn’t a wave; it was a detonation. It tore through her, blinding white and vicious, her thighs clamping around his head, her back arching so sharply she thought it might break. She screamed, a raw, torn thing, as she came, pulsing around his fingers.
She collapsed forward, shaking, but before she could recover, she was moving. Sliding down his body, her mouth finding his cock, now fully erect and straining. She took him deep, her throat opening, letting him hit the back. She could taste herself on him, a faint, musky tang layered over his own salt. She bobbed her head, her lips stretched tight around his girth, one hand working the base of his shaft, the other cupping his balls, rolling them gently.He was groaning, his hands fisting in the sheets. “Channah… fuck…”
She released him with a pop, her saliva making a shining bridge.She was dripping, slick and ready. She positioned herself above him, guiding his cock with her hand.Not to her cunt. She pressed the broad head against the tight ring of her ass.“Look at me,” she said.
His eyes, dark with need, locked onto hers.She pushed down.
It was harder this time, without the frenzy of the night to numb it. A bright, burning stretch that made her breath hitch. She watched his face contort in pleasure as she took him, inch by inch, until he was fully seated inside her, a deep, impossible fullness. She held there, letting her body adjust, the ache flowering into a fierce, possessive heat.Then she moved.
She rode him with a slow, desperate intensity, rising until only the tip remained inside, then sinking back down, taking him all.Each stroke was a claiming. Her hands braced on his chest, her breasts swaying, her red hair sticking to her damp neck and shoulders. She watched his face, watched him watch her take him in the ass, his jaw slack, his eyes glazed.
“You feel so deep,” she panted. “Christ, you’re in so deep.”
He gripped her hips, his fingers digging in, helping her find a harder, faster rhythm. The slap of skin, the wet sound of their joining, filled the sunlit room. She could feel her own climax building again, a coiling tension deep in her gut, fed by the brutal friction inside her.
“I’m gonna come,” he warned, his voice strained.She didn’t stop. She rode him harder, the headboard knocking a soft, persistent beat against the wall. Just as she felt his rhythm stutter, the first pulses of his release beginning deep within her, she pulled off.
He groaned in frustrated protest, but she was already sliding down his body. She took his slick, reddened cock back into her mouth, tasting the stark, earthy flavor of her own ass on him. She sucked him hard, her hand working in tandem with her mouth, her tongue swirling around the head.
“You want to come on my face?” she mumbled around him, looking up at him. “Do it.”
He didn’t need more encouragement. He pulled himself from her mouth, his fist replacing her lips.He jerked himself, fast and rough. The first hot jet hit her cheekbone, sliding down towards her ear.The second splashed across her lips. She opened her mouth, sticking out her tongue, and the third, thickest pulse landed on her tongue, bitter and warm. The rest striped her chin, her neck, painted her pale breasts.
She moaned, a low, hungry sound, and licked her lips clean, swallowing. Then she crawled back up his body, her skin sticking to his with sweat and come. She kissed him, deep and filthy, letting him taste the messy composite of themselves.When she broke the kiss, she was crying. Silently, the tears just tracking through the drying streaks on her cheeks.
“I want to do this forever,” she whispered, the words brittle.He wiped a tear with his thumb. “We can’t.”
“I know.”
The silence stretched. The sunbeam had moved, now illuminating the abandoned wine glass, the red dregs like a stain at the bottom.
“My flight’s tomorrow,” he said, the words hanging in the air, final as a stone dropping.
She nodded, her face buried in the hollow of his neck.She didn’t ask him to stay. She didn’t promise to follow. The unwashed sheets beneath them, the echoing emptiness of her house around them, the fading light—it all felt like an ending being written in real time. She held onto him, the man who had found the hidden, hungry thing, and wondered if forever had only ever meant this: one perfect, ruined day, and the long ache that comes after.