Chapter 65: The Public Exhibition
The champagne was flat. Channah stared at the pale orange liquid in her flute, the bubbles long dead, a metaphor she was too tired to entertain. Across the small table, Ryan was scrolling through emails on his phone, the screen’s glow etching harsh lines into his face. The elegant riot of the rooftop bar, all polished brass and whispered finance, felt like a diorama they were stuck inside.
“He’s asking for the syllabus revisions by Monday,” Ryan said, not looking up. “As if I have any fucking idea what I’m teaching next week, or where.”
“Mhm.” Channah speared a piece of overpriced melon. The taste was bland. Everything was bland, save for the lingering, phantom ache in her ass from the morning, a ghost of feeling that seemed more real than the linen napkin in her lap.
She put her fork down. The clink was too loud. He glanced up.
“What?”
“I can’t do this.”
“Do what?” He put his phone face-down on the table. A small surrender.
“This.” She gestured at the space between them, at the performance of normalcy. “The mimosa. The small talk. We fuck like we’re trying to exorcise something, and then we sit across from each other and talk about syllabi. It’s psychotic.”
A waiter glided past, offering a silent, judgmental replenishment of their water. They both smiled tightly, shook their heads. When he was gone, the silence tightened.
“What do you want to do, Channah?” Ryan’s voice was low, stripped bare. “You want to scream? You want to throw this table over? Tell me. I’ll do it.”
“I want to feel you.” The words left her, simple and brutal. “Not later. Not when we get home and exorcise the demons again. Now. I want to remember that this,” she pointed at him, then at herself, “is a fact. A physical, undeniable fact.”
He held her gaze, and the air in the semi-private booth shifted, grew thick and electric. The city glittered, indifferent, beyond the glass. His hand, resting on the table, twitched.
Slowly, deliberately, she slid her hand from her own lap, across the smooth linen, and into his. Not to hold it. To trail her fingertips over his palm, his wrist, up the inner seam of his tailored trousers. She found the shape of him, soft beneath the wool, and cupped him. His breath hitched, a tiny, captured sound.
“Right here,” she whispered, leaning forward. The scent of her perfume, jasmine and skin, mixed with the brine of the oysters they hadn’t touched. “I want you to fuck my ass right here. And then I want you to lick it clean. I want to taste myself on your tongue after.”
His cock stiffened under her palm, thickening rapidly against the constraint of his zipper. His eyes were black, pupil swallowing iris. “Someone will see.”
“Let them.”
She didn’t break eye contact as she pushed her chair back, just enough. She gathered the fabric of her simple silk skirt in her hands, pulling it up as she shifted to the very edge of her seat. She wasn’t wearing underwear. The decision had been a quiet one made while dressing, a secret pact with the day. The cool air of the rooftop kissed her exposed skin.
She turned, presenting her back to the glittering skyline, leaning forward over the table. Her elbows knocked against the cutlery. One hand reached back, fingers spreading herself open for him. “Now, Ryan.”
He moved fast. A glance confirmed the nearest diners were engrossed, their backs turned. He unfastened his trousers, freed himself. He was fully hard, the tip already glistening. He used his own spit, a crude, wet sound, slicking himself. He positioned the blunt head against her, and pushed.
The intrusion was breathtaking, a shocking, public violation. She gasped, her knuckles white on the table edge, her forehead nearly touching her plate. He sank into her ass in one deep, relentless stroke, burying himself to the hilt. The stretch was immense, a burning fullness that stole the air from her lungs. She felt every inch of him, a brutal claiming in the muted daylight.
He didn’t wait for her to adjust. He set a punishing rhythm, short, sharp thrusts that rocked her forward against the table. The porcelain trembled. Each drive was a jolt of pure, filthy sensation. The risk was a live wire; every clink of a distant glass, every footstep on the deck, amplified the desperate, secret heat coiling in her gut. She could feel the eyes of the city on her back, imaginary or not, and it only made her cunt weep, soaking the inside of her thighs.
“You take it so well,” he growled, one hand gripping her hip, the other clamping over her mouth to stifle her cries. His fingers tasted of salt and metal. “Your filthy, perfect ass. Christ.”
She was close, hurtling toward it with a speed that terrified her. The pressure, the shame, the blinding pleasure fused into a single point of incineration. She was about to shatter, right there, with a half-eaten salad in front of her.
He felt her inner muscles fluttering, tightening. He pulled out of her abruptly, the sudden emptiness a shock. “Not yet.”
Before she could protest, she felt his hands on her shoulders, guiding her down. She slid off the seat, onto her knees on the hard, cool tile beneath the table. It was a dim, enclosed space, smelling of polished wood and their sex. His cock, slick and dark with her, was level with her mouth.
“Taste it,” he ordered, his voice rough. “Taste your own ass on my cock.”
She opened her mouth and took him in. The flavor was immediate, intense—musky, dark, profoundly intimate. She suckled him, her tongue lapping at the mixed essence of their bodies, cleaning him with a desperate fervor. She took him deep, until her throat protested, then pulled back to swirl her tongue around the head.
“Suck me,” he rasped, his fingers tangling in her hair, not guiding, just holding on. “Make me come. I want to paint that pretty therapist face of yours.”
She obeyed, working him with her lips and tongue, one hand stroking the base of his shaft, the other cupping his heavy balls. His breathing grew ragged, choppy. She could feel the tension gathering in him, the familiar pulse beneath her lips.
He pulled himself from her mouth. “Look at me.”
She tilted her head back, her lips swollen, her eyes glazed. He fisted his cock, his strokes hard and fast. “Open your mouth. Wider.”
She did, her tongue lying flat, an offering.
With a choked grunt, he came. Thick, hot ropes of cum streaked across her face—a stripe over her cheekbone, a splash on her chin, a heavy drop that landed on her outstretched tongue. She kept her eyes open, locked on his, as he emptied himself onto her. She moaned, a low, vibrating sound of triumph, and deliberately ran her tongue over her lips, collecting the bitter-salty fluid, swallowing.
He shuddered, spent. For a moment, the only sound was their breathing, harsh and uneven in the hidden space.
With a shaky hand, she wiped a stray strand from her chin. Then, calmly, she crawled out from under the table and slid back into her seat. She smoothed her skirt down. Her face was a mess, his cum cooling on her skin.
The waiter materialized, a silent ghost. “Can I bring you anything else? More champagne?”
Channah smiled, a radiant, composed expression that didn’t reach her eyes. “Yes,” she said, her voice remarkably steady. “Another mimosa, please. And the check.”
The waiter nodded and vanished.
Ryan was silently re-fastening his trousers, his face a mask. He reached across the table, his thumb gently wiping at a spot she’d missed near her temple. His touch was tender, incongruous.
“We’re going to get arrested,” he whispered, but a faint, wild smile touched his lips.
“Let’s,” she said, picking up her dead champagne. “It would be simpler.”
The check arrived. He put down a credit card without looking at the total. The mundane transaction, the slip to sign, felt like the most bizarre part of the entire afternoon. They rode the elevator down in silence, surrounded by strangers. In the reflective brass doors, she saw her own face, still marked by him. She didn’t wipe it away.
On the sun-baked sidewalk, he took her hand. Not a hidden, clandestine grip, but a plain, firm holding. Her skin was sticky. His was warm.
“Where to?” he asked.
She looked down the bustling street, then up at him. “Home,” she said. The word, for the first time, did not feel like a solitary confinement. It felt, terrifyingly, like a possibility. “We have a suitcase to unpack.”