Chapter 77: The Stacks and the Taste of Ass
The heavy library door swung shut behind them, sealing the humid scent of old paper and their own transgressions inside. The city air hit them, a jarring mix of exhaust and summer rain. They walked without speaking for a block, the silence between them loud, a cathedral of its own.
Ryan’s hand found hers. His knuckles were white. “I feel like I just robbed a bank.”
“We did,” Channah said, a laugh bubbling in her throat. “We stole time back.” She brought his fingers to her lips, tasting the ghost of salt and skin. “And I can still taste myself on you.”
The walk to her apartment was a journey through layers of their past. They passed the diner where they’d shared pie at 3 a.m., the park bench where he’d confessed he was failing his semantics class. The memories were no longer painful artifacts. They were fuel.
Her building loomed, a pre-war façade of crumbling brick. The elevator groaned its ascent. Inside her apartment, the boxes stood sentinel, a testament to a future they were now building piece by terrifying piece. But they ignored them, drawn instead to the bedroom window where the evening sky was bleeding into a bruised purple over the water towers.
He stood behind her, his arms wrapping around her waist, his chin resting on her head. They watched the city lights begin to prick the dusk.
“It’s different now,” she said softly, not turning. “In the library… it was about reclaiming something. Exorcising a ghost. This,” she pressed back against the solid length of him hardening against her, “this is about now. It’s about the fact that I’ve spent twenty-five years wondering what that mouth felt like.”
She turned in his arms. Her eyes were dark, pupils swallowing the green. She pushed his leather jacket off his shoulders, letting it fall to the floor. Her fingers worked the buttons of his shirt, her touch clinical and desperate at once. He peeled her blouse over her head, the lace of her bra stark against her pale skin. He unhooked it with a flick, and her breasts spilled into his hands, heavy and warm. He thumbed her nipples, watching them tighten into hard peaks.
“I want you in my mouth,” she whispered. “And I want your mouth on me. I want it all at once. I want the mess of it.”
They stumbled to the bed, a tangle of limbs and shedding clothes. She pushed him onto his back and straddled his face, lowering herself onto his mouth without preamble. At the same time, she took his cock into her own, swallowing him deep in one smooth, hungry descent.
The dual sensation was an electric shock. His tongue delved into her, lapping at her folds, seeking her clit with a focus that made her thighs tremble. She moaned around his shaft, the vibration traveling straight to his core. She rocked her hips against his face, fucking his mouth with short, urgent grinds while she bobbed her head on him, taking him to the back of her throat again and again.
It was wet, sloppy, and profoundly obscene. The sounds filled the room—guttural sucks, choked gasps, the slick slap of skin. She came first, a sharp, silent convulsion that made her tighten around his tongue. She cried out, the sound muffled by his cock, her body shuddering. He gripped her hips, holding her there, drinking her in as she pulsed against his lips.
When the last tremor subsided, she switched their positions with a fierce urgency. She lay back, pulling him over her, guiding his cock back to her ass. It was still slick from her mouth, from her own juices smeared across his skin.
“Now,” she demanded, her voice ragged. “Fuck my ass now, Ryan. Own it.”
He positioned himself, his weight on his elbows. He pushed inside the tight, clenching heat, and she arched off the bed with a raw, shattered gasp. Her nails scraped down his back.
“God… yes… fucking ruin me.”
He set a brutal, pounding rhythm. Each thrust drove the breath from her lungs. The headboard knocked a dull, consistent beat against the wall. He watched her face—eyes squeezed shut, lips parted, a strand of red hair stuck to her sweaty temple. This was not the careful reclamation of the library. This was a claiming. This was her, beneath him, taking every inch of him into the most forbidden part of herself, and welcoming it.
“Tell me,” he grunted, his control fraying.
“It’s yours,” she choked out, her eyes flying open to lock with his. “It was always yours. I’m yours. Fuck!”
Her second orgasm tore through her, a deeper, more visceral quake that clenched around him like a fist. That was all it took. He pulled out, his cock gleaming in the low light. He shoved two fingers into her dripping cunt, gathering her wetness, then smeared it over his throbbing length.
“Open,” he commanded.
She opened her mouth, obedient, wanton. He fisted himself, his strokes rough and fast. With a roar that was part triumph, part surrender, he came. Thick spurts landed on her tongue, painted her lips, streaked across her cheekbone. He kept jerking, spent, until the last drop beaded at his tip and fell onto her chin.
She lay perfectly still, a beautiful, debauched portrait. Then her tongue darted out, collecting what was on her lips. She swallowed. She reached up, gathered the cum from her cheek with her fingers, and sucked them clean.
The room was silent save for their ragged breathing. The knocking headboard had stilled. He collapsed beside her, his body humming, every nerve alight.
She rolled onto her side, facing him. She traced the tattoo on his shoulder, a Celtic knot he’d gotten the year after they’d parted. “I spent decades building a life on the assumption that this was gone forever,” she said, her voice hoarse. “That we were a fossil. Now you’re here. And those boxes are in my hall. And my ass is throbbing. And my mouth tastes like you.”
He kissed her, softly this time, a slow melding of tongues that tasted of salt and sex and a future that had, impossibly, arrived.
“The boxes can wait,” he said against her mouth.
“They can wait forever,” she replied, and curled into him, her body fitting against his as if the decades between had been nothing more than a drawn breath.