Chapter 45: The Afternoon Reminder
The bourbon taste was still on her tongue the next afternoon, a phantom burn beneath the clinical mint of her toothpaste. Her body felt rearranged, a map of tender places and deep-set aches that throbbed in time with her heartbeat. She moved through her sunlit office, straightening a pillow on the deep burgundy velvet couch, aligning a pen on the cherry-wood desk. The unlit candle sat where she’d left it, its wax softened from the morning sun. Outside her floor-to-ceiling windows, New York baked under a hard blue sky.
Her next patient was in ten minutes. A video call. A man struggling with intimacy after divorce. The irony was not lost on her.
She heard the key in her apartment door, the quiet click of it closing. Ryan. They hadn’t discussed him coming over. They hadn’t discussed anything. After the silence in his loft, they’d dressed, ordered food, eaten it without tasting it, and slept wrapped around each other like survivors of a shipwreck. He’d left at dawn to get clothes. Now he was back.
He appeared in her office doorway, a duffel bag in his hand. He looked like he hadn’t slept either. His long hair was tied back, his eyes dark. He took in the room, the couch, the desk, her. She was wearing a simple cream-colored blouse and a knee-length skirt. Professional armor.
“You have a session,” he said, not a question.
“In seven minutes.”
He nodded, dropped his bag by the door, and walked to the window. He looked out, his hands in his pockets. The tension wasn’t sexual. It was existential. It was the question he’d asked with his body last night—what now?—hanging, unanswered, in the perfumed air of her sanctuary.
Her computer chimed. Her patient, early. She smoothed her skirt, sat, and connected the call. A man’s face, weary and familiar, filled the screen. “Peter. Hi. I’m glad you’re here.”
Ryan didn’t move from the window. He was a silhouette against the bright skyline.
She began the session, her voice falling into its easy, attentive rhythm. She listened to Peter talk about his fear of touching someone new, of his skin feeling like a foreign country. She offered insights, gentle reflections. Her mind was a partitioned thing: one half here, with Peter’s loneliness; the other half acutely aware of the man standing six feet away, the man who knew her skin better than anyone ever had.
Halfway through, Ryan turned from the window. He looked at her, his expression unreadable. He walked toward the desk, his steps silent on the thick rug. He stopped beside her chair, just outside the camera’s view.
Peter was saying, “It’s like I’ve forgotten the language.”
Ryan reached out and brushed a strand of her red hair behind her ear. His fingers traced the line of her jaw. Then his hand slid down, over the collar of her blouse, and cupped her breast. His thumb found her nipple through the fabric, rubbing it slowly until it hardened into a tight peak.
Channah’s breath caught. She kept her eyes on Peter’s pixelated face. She reached down with her left hand, found the mute button on her keyboard, and pressed it.
“What are you doing?” she whispered, her voice low and sharp.
“Listening,” Ryan said. His other hand came around, unbuttoning her blouse with deliberate, quiet clicks. He pushed the fabric aside, pulled down the cup of her bra, and freed her breast. The afternoon sun warmed her pale skin. He leaned down and took her nipple into his mouth, sucking hard, his tongue circling the areola.
A bolt of pure, electrical need shot straight to her cunt. She clenched her thighs together. On screen, Peter’s lips moved, sharing his silent sorrow.
Ryan released her nipple with a wet pop. He straightened, his fingers going to his belt. He unbuckled it, unbuttoned his jeans, and pushed them down along with his boxers. His cock sprang out, already fully hard, the head flushed and leaking. He’d showered at her place that morning. She’d washed him herself, soaping his cock, rinsing him clean. But as he stepped closer, she could smell the faint, musky remnant of herself on him from their frantic wake-up fuck. Her ass, from the night before, still on his skin.
He guided his cock to her lips. She didn’t hesitate. She opened her mouth and took him in, the taste of her own morning ass flooding her senses—bitter, intimate, profoundly filthy. It was a claim. It was an answer. This is what we are now.
She sucked him deep, her head bobbing, using her tongue on the sensitive underside. She took him all the way, until her nose pressed into his pubic hair and her throat relaxed around him. She deepthroated him with a focused hunger, her eyes still fixed on her muted patient. Ryan’s hands gripped her head, not forcing, just holding, his hips giving shallow thrusts into the wet heat of her mouth.
She could feel him getting closer, the tense, gathering heat in his shaft. She pulled off with a gasp, strings of saliva bridging her lips to his glistening cock. She stood up, her skirt rumpled. She turned her back to him, bent over her cherry-wood desk, pushing aside a coffee cup and a notepad. She looked back at him over her shoulder, then grabbed the hem of her skirt and pulled it up to her waist. She wasn’t wearing panties.
She presented herself to him, her ass still marked faintly from his grip the day before. The late afternoon light caressed the curve of her exposed collarbone, then flowed down the length of her spine, illuminating the pale, full cheeks and the dark pink furl of her asshole, still loose and used from his relentless fucking.
He didn’t enter her. Not yet.
He stepped forward, placed his hands on her hips, and lowered his head.
HE EATS HER ASS.
His tongue was broad and wet and demanding. It wasn't the teasing prelude from his loft. This was a feast. He licked her from clit to tailbone, burying his face in her, spearing his tongue deep inside her asshole again and again. He ate her with a groaning, animal hunger, his stubble scraping her tender skin, his nose pressed against her perineum. He slurped and licked and probed, devouring her as if he could consume the past twenty years of absence, every missed touch, every silent fantasy. The sound was obscenely loud in the quiet room—wet, sloppy, urgent.
Channah muffled a cry against her own arm, her body shuddering. Her knees went weak. The professional composure she’d worn like a second skin was ripped away. She was just a body, being claimed. Her cunt dripped onto the rug below the desk.
On the computer screen, Peter looked at his watch, a gentle, confused frown on his face.
Ryan pulled back, his mouth slick and shiny. He spat onto his fingers, rubbed the saliva over her asshole and his cock, and then, in one smooth, brutal motion, he slid into her. There was no resistance, just a deep, filling stretch. He fucked her with silent, powerful thrusts, each one driving her hips against the hard edge of the desk. His hands gripped her flesh, holding her open for him. She could feel every ridge of his cock, the perfect friction, the building pressure in her own gut. She bit her own arm to stay silent, her eyes squeezed shut.
She felt his rhythm stutter, his thrusts becoming jagged, desperate. He was close. With a strength that surprised her, she pushed back against him, forcing him out of her. She turned, her back against the desk, and dropped to her knees in front of him.
“Do it,” she panted, looking up at him, her lips swollen, her face flushed. “On my face. Now.”
He understood. He fisted his own slick, hard cock and began to jerk it, fast and rough. His eyes were locked on hers, blazing with something that looked like fury or love or both. He grunted, a harsh, guttural sound.
The first hot stripe of cum hit her cheekbone. The second splashed across her lips and chin. The third landed on her forehead. Thick, pearly ropes of it, the smell of it sharp and male. She kept her mouth open, her eyes open, taking it. When he was spent, she brought a finger to her chin, collected a drop, and brought it to her mouth. She licked it off, swallowing. Then she slowly, deliberately, ran her tongue over her lips, gathering the rest.
She stood on shaky legs. She reached past him, her fingers finding the mute button again. She unmuted the call.
Peter’s voice immediately filled the room. “—so I just don’t know how to start again.”
Channah’s voice was perfectly steady, a little husky, but composed. “The fact that you’re here, talking about this fear, Peter, is the start.” She reached down with a calm hand and pulled her bra cup back up, re-buttoned her blouse. She didn’t look at Ryan. He was pulling up his jeans, his breathing still ragged.
She ended the session a few minutes later with her usual gentle closing. The second the screen went black, she turned.
Ryan was staring at her, his face unreadable. Cum was drying on her skin, in her bangs.
“That’s two,” she said, her voice low and raw. She walked to him, pressed a sticky kiss to his mouth. He could taste himself on her. “One more tonight.”