Chapter 69: The Staircase Ascent
The bedroom was a portrait of her life without him. Books piled on a cherrywood dresser, a silk robe draped over a reading chair, a single pearl earring on the nightstand. The light was softer here, filtered through a large maple tree outside the window. It felt dangerously personal.
Ryan stood just inside the doorway, as if hesitant to violate this inner sanctum. Channah didn’t give him the chance. She pushed the door shut with her foot, the click of the latch final. Then she was on him, her mouth finding his with a hunger that was past words. She tasted of him, of coffee, of the city. She walked him backward until his knees hit the edge of the bed and he sat down heavily.
“You talked about what you didn’t do,” she said, her breath hot against his lips. She unbuttoned his shirt, her fingers fumbling. “Now show me what you would have done. If you’d stayed.”
She shoved the shirt off his shoulders. Her own blouse followed, buttons pinging against the hardwood. She stood before him in just her skirt, her pale breasts full and heavy, her nipples tight. She saw his eyes darken, his throat work as he swallowed.
“I would have worshipped you,” he said, his voice gravel. He leaned forward and took one nipple into his mouth, sucking hard, his hand cupping the other, thumb rubbing roughly over the peak.
She buried her hands in his long hair, holding him to her. “Bullshit,” she gasped. “You were never that simple.”
He looked up, his mouth wet. “No. I wasn’t.” He pushed her skirt down over her hips. It pooled at her feet. He stared at her nakedness, at the thatch of red curls and the swollen lips beneath, still glistening from their stairway frenzy. “I would have fucked you like I owned you. Every damn day.”
He pulled her onto the bed, rolling so she was beneath him. His weight was a comfort, an anchor. He kissed her deeply, then trailed his mouth down her sternum, over the curve of her belly. He hooked his hands under her knees and pushed her legs up and apart, spreading her wide.
“Look at you,” he murmured, his breath tickling her folds. “So fucking wet for me. Still.” He didn’t use his tongue. He used his fingers, parting her, exposing the slick, pink flesh. He rubbed his thumb over her clit in a slow, maddening circle. “This would have been mine. All of it.”
“It was,” she moaned, arching off the bed. “It always was.”
With a grunt, he shifted. He positioned himself at her entrance, the broad head of his cock nudging against her. He pushed in, not with a single thrust, but with a slow, inexorable pressure that stretched her gloriously, filled her completely. She cried out, her head thrown back into the pillow that smelled of her shampoo.
He began to move, a deep, grinding rhythm that hit a spot inside her that made her see white. Each withdrawal was an agony, each plunge a relief. He braced himself on his elbows, his face inches from hers. Sweat dripped from his temple onto her cheek.
“Tell me,” he demanded, his pace quickening. “Tell me you thought about this. All these years.”
“Yes.”
“How?”
“In my office,” she choked out, meeting his thrusts. “Listening to clients talk about their hollow marriages… I’d picture your cock. I’d get so wet I had to cross my legs.”
A harsh, approving sound ripped from his throat. “What else?”
“In my bed. Alone. My fingers weren’t enough. I wanted your mouth. I wanted you to fucking ruin me.”
He slammed into her, his rhythm breaking into something frantic, predatory. “Like this?”
“Harder.”
He obeyed, his hips pistoning, the bedframe knocking a dull tattoo against the wall. The sounds were obscene: the wet slap of skin, their ragged breaths, her sharp, pleading gasps. The intellectual professor was gone. This was the restless, hungry spirit beneath, claiming what he’d lost.
She felt her climax gathering, a tidal wave building from her core. “Ryan, I’m—”
“Come,” he snarled. “Come all over my cock. Let me feel it.”
His command tipped her over. The orgasm tore through her, violent and uncontestable. Her inner muscles clenched around him in rapid, milking spasms that ripped a shout from his lungs. He drove into her once, twice more, then buried himself to the hilt as his own release surged. She felt the hot jet of it deep inside, a claiming more profound than any word.
He collapsed on her, his weight a welcome burden. They lay like that for long minutes, sticky and spent, the only sound their slowing breath. The tree outside the window cast dancing leaf-shadows on the ceiling.
Finally, he rolled off, pulling her with him so she lay draped across his chest. Her hand rested over the tattoo on his pectoral, a bird in flight she remembered from twenty years ago. It was faded now.
“Mrs. Alvarez,” he said into her hair.
“What about her?”
“You missed your session.”
Channah closed her eyes. The professional guilt was a faint, distant pulse, utterly drowned out by the physical reality of him. “I called in. From the taxi. Told her I had a family emergency.”
He was silent for a beat. “Is that what this is?”
She didn’t answer. She traced the outline of the bird. “You missed your panel.”
“Fuck the panel.” His hand stroked her spine, fingers tracing the bumps of her vertebrae. “I emailed my co-chair from my phone while you were paying the driver. Told him I had a personal matter.”
A small, shaky laugh escaped her. “Two responsible adults playing hooky.”
“It’s not hooky,” he said quietly. His hand stilled on her back. “It’s a reckoning.”
The word hung in the vanilla-scented air. She propped herself up on one elbow to look at him. The afternoon light etched the lines around his eyes, the silver strands in his beard. He looked his age, and he looked utterly beautiful to her.
“What happens tomorrow, Ryan?” The question was out, quiet and stark.
He met her gaze. His hand came up to push a strand of red hair behind her ear. “I don’t know.” He said it not with evasion, but with a raw honesty. “Tomorrow I’m supposed to fly back to Washington. To my classes. My empty condo. My life that just… moves.”
“And me?” she whispered. “I have clients tomorrow. A mortgage. A life that… stayed.”
He pulled her down and kissed her. It was tender, a devastating contrast to the animal frenzy of minutes before. “Right now,” he said against her mouth, “we have tonight. In your bed. In your house.” He slid his hand down the curve of her hip, his touch reigniting embers she thought were ashes. “And I’m not done worshipping you yet.”
He moved down the bed again. This time, his mouth was gentle, exploring, tracing the inside of her thigh where a faint bruise was already blooming from his grip on the stairs. He kissed her stomach, her navel, the underswell of her breast. He took his time.
Outside, a car alarm blared briefly, then cut off. The world continued, indifferent. In the warm, quiet cage of her bedroom, with the taste of him still on her tongue and the smell of their sex on her skin, Channah let herself forget about tomorrow. There was only his mouth, his hands, the slow-building heat, and the terrifying, glorious possibility that this reckoning had only just begun.