Chapter 66: The Staircase Ascent
The bedroom was a testament to a life lived alone. Books piled on a velvet-upholstered chair, a silk robe tossed over the footboard, a single lamp casting a honeyed glow across a rug worn thin in a path from bed to bathroom. It smelled like her—that same jasmine, layered over sleep and skin.
Ryan stood just inside the door, watching her. Channah walked to the center of the room, near the unmade bed, and turned. The city’s faint sodium light bled around the edges of the blinds, striping her body. She began to unbutton her blouse, her movements deliberate, her eyes never leaving his.
“I want to see you,” she said, her voice softer now, stripped of the rooftop’s daring. “All of you. Not just the parts that fit in my mouth or my ass.”
He understood. He toed off his shoes, shucked his jacket. His shirt followed, revealing the dark tapestry of ink across his chest, his shoulders. The tattoos were stories she’d missed—a winding river, a quote in Gaelic, dates, birds in flight. He undid his trousers and let them fall, stepping out of them. He stood naked before her, still half-hard, marked by the day’s violence and passion.
She was naked now too, her pale skin luminous, the curves of her breasts and hips painting shadows on the walls. She reached for him, not to pull him to the bed, but to trace the lines on his skin with her fingertips. “When did you get this one?”
“After my father died. Five years ago.”
Her touch was a question. His answer was a history. They stood there for long minutes, a silent archaeology of the years apart. It was more intimate than anything they’d done on the stairs.
“I’m scared,” she whispered, her forehead coming to rest against his collarbone.
“Of what?”
“That this is just another exorcism. That tomorrow we’ll wake up and be strangers who know what each other’s come faces look like.”
He cupped her face, his thumb brushing over the faint, sticky residue near her hairline that she’d missed. “I’ve been a stranger to myself for twenty years, Channah. Until today.”
He kissed her then, a deep, slow possession that tasted of forgiveness and salt. It unspooled something in her chest. She led him to the bed, pushing him back onto the rumpled sheets. She followed him down, straddling his hips, but instead of taking him inside her, she leaned forward, her long red hair cascading around their faces, and kissed her way down his stomach.
She took his cock in her hand, stroking him back to full, aching hardness. Then she shifted, rotating her body until her head was level with his groin, and her slick, swollen cunt was hovering over his mouth. She looked back at him over the curve of her own ass.
“I want to feel you everywhere at once,” she said. “I want to drown in you.”
He needed no further instruction. His hands gripped her thighs, pulling her down onto his face as he lifted his head to meet her. His tongue plunged into her, licking deep, fucking her with his mouth as he had with his cock on the stairs. She cried out, the sound muffled against his shaft. She took him into her mouth, swallowing him to the root, her throat working around him.
The 69 was not a position of elegant lovemaking. It was wet, and messy, and profoundly animal. The room filled with the sounds of sloppy suction, ragged breathing, and muffled groans. She could taste the subtle, musky hint of her own ass on him still, a primal loop of their own making. He was relentless, his tongue circling her clit, then diving back inside her, drinking her down as she bucked against his mouth.
“Fuck, your mouth,” he gasped, pulling away from her for a second, his voice thick. “I’m gonna come if you keep doing that.”
She released him with a pop. “Not yet.” She turned around again, her body slippery with sweat, kneeling over him. She reached back, guiding him, but not to her cunt. She positioned the broad head of his cock at her other, tighter hole, still wet from his saliva and her own arousal.
“Here,” she breathed. “I want you to finish here.”
She sank down slowly, taking him into her ass with a deep, controlled impalement. The stretch was even more intense than on the stairs, a deep, burning fullness that made her see stars. She clenched around him, and he cursed, his hands flying to her hips.
“Christ, you’re so tight. You’re fucking milkng me.”
She began to move, riding him with slow, grinding undulations of her hips. Every drop, every pull, was a calculated assault on her own senses. She could feel every ridge of him, the violent pulse of his blood beneath the skin. She reached between her own legs, rubbing her clit in rough, frantic circles as she fucked herself on his cock.
“Look at me,” he demanded, his voice a raw scrape.
She opened her eyes, met his gaze. His face was a mask of agonized pleasure. Seeing him like that, knowing she was the cause, tipped her over the edge. Her orgasm ripped through her with a silent, seismic violence. Her body clamped down on him in rhythmic, vice-like pulses, her cunt dripping onto his stomach.
The sensation of her coming around him was too much. With a roar, he thrust up into her, burying himself to the hilt, and let go. His release was a hot flood inside her, pulse after pulse filling her up, marking her internally. She collapsed forward onto his chest, feeling him throb inside her as the last of his cum spilled out around the edges.
They lay tangled, breathing in shattered unison. The room came back into focus—the traffic sighing four stories below, the rustle of the sheets.
After a long while, he softened and slipped out of her. He didn’t move to clean up. He just held her, his fingers tracing idle patterns on her back.
“The suitcase,” she murmured into his skin.
“It can wait.”
“It’s waited twenty years.”
He was quiet for a moment. “What’s in it?”
“Clothes. Toiletries. A copy of The Unbearable Lightness of Being I’ve been meaning to re-read. My charger.” She paused. “A letter. From when you left. I never sent it.”
He went still. “What did it say?”
She pushed herself up, looking down at him. His cum was leaking out of her, onto his thigh, a stark intimacy. “It said that you were a coward. And that I hated you. And that if you ever showed your face again, I’d probably forgive you in about five minutes.”
A sad smile touched his lips. “Accurate.”
“I was so angry. I think I still am.”
“I know. I can taste it.” He touched her lips. “It’s mixed in with everything else.”
She slid off him and padded, naked, to the corner of the room where his small, wheeled suitcase stood. She brought it back to the foot of the bed, clicked the latches, and opened it. On top of the neatly folded clothes was a battered, yellowing envelope.
She didn’t pick it up. She just looked at it, then at him. “Your turn to be scared.”
He sat up, the sheets pooling around his waist. He looked from the letter to her face, his own a landscape of dread and hope. Outside, a siren wailed, climbing then falling into the night. The past was in the room now, unpacked and waiting between them on the rumpled sheets.
“Read it to me,” he said, the words costing him something. “Please.”