Chapter 83: The Photographer's Request
The faint grey light of a Brooklyn dawn seeped around the edges of the blinds. It wasn’t golden, not yet. It was the colour of doubt. Channah lay awake, Ryan’s arm a heavy, comforting weight across her waist, his breath warm against the back of her neck. Her mind was a spreadsheet of ruin.
The practice. The mortgage. The shared friends who would choose sides. Martin’s calm, reasonable fury. The catastrophic, liberating bomb she was about to detonate in the middle of her own life.
She shifted slightly. Ryan’s arm tightened.
“You’re thinking,” he mumbled, his voice sleep-ravaged.
“I’m cataloguing,” she corrected, staring at the faint crack in the ceiling plaster she’d been meaning to fix for a year.
“Same thing.” He nuzzled into her hair. “Tell me one thing on the list.”
“My partner, Liza. We have a joint business account. She’s my closest friend. She thinks Martin is a ‘stable, grounding influence.’ She’ll see this as a psychotic break.”
Ryan was silent for a long moment. “Do you?”
Channah turned in his arms. In the weak light, his tattoos were blurred shadows, his face all angles and stubble. He looked like exactly what he was: a disruption. “I feel more grounded now than I have in a decade. That’s the terrifying part.”
He kissed her, a slow, deep communion that tasted of sleep and whiskey and her. His hand slid down the curve of her hip, over the swell of her ass, his fingers tracing the tender flesh he’d used so thoroughly hours before. A possessive, soothing circle.
“He lands at seven tonight,” she said against his mouth.
“Then we have today.”
His touch grew more deliberate, his palm cupping her between her legs, finding her already soft and wet. Night had done nothing to cool this. It had banked the fire, but the coals were white-hot, ready.
“I need to not think for an hour,” she whispered, pushing him onto his back and straddling him. She took him in hand, guiding his thick, hardening cock to her entrance. She sank down onto him with a slow, controlled roll of her hips, swallowing him whole in one seamless motion. A low groan vibrated in his chest.
This was different from the night before. Less fury, more fortification. She rode him with a steady, grinding rhythm, her head falling back, her heavy breasts swaying. He watched her, his hands on her thighs, dark against her pale skin.
“Talk to me,” he said. “While you fuck me. Tell me what you’re going to do.”
She opened her eyes, her movements not ceasing. “I’m going to call him. Before his first meeting. Catch him in the hotel. I’ll tell him not to come home.”
“And when he asks why?”
“I’ll tell him I’m in love with someone else. That it’s over.” She leaned forward, bracing her hands on his chest, her pace increasing. “It will be a shitty, painful phone call. He’ll cry. He’s a crier. It will make me feel like a monster.”
Ryan thrust up to meet her, the slap of their skin a quiet, rhythmic beat in the still room. “You’re not a monster.”
“Aren’t I?” She drove down harder, taking him deeper, using the friction to burn away the guilt. “I’ve been planning this. Not consciously, but I have. Letting him drift. Letting the silence grow. Making room. For you.” She gasped as he hit a spot that made her vision blur. “Oh, god, right there. Don’t stop.”
He took over, bucking his hips, pounding up into her from below. The bedframe gave a muffled protest against the wall. “So be the monster. Be the villain in his story. Be the crazy bitch who threw it all away for a fuck.”
“It’s not just a fuck,” she snarled, her composure shattering.
“I know,” he grunted, his own control fraying. “But that’s what he’ll see. Let him. It makes it cleaner.”
He felt her tighten around him, her inner muscles fluttering in a desperate, climbing rhythm. “Ryan, I’m gonna…”
“Come. Come all over my cock. Then I’m going to flip you over and fuck your ass again. I want you sore. I want you to feel me all day while you’re ending your marriage.”
The crude command pushed her over the edge. Her orgasm ripped through her, a silent, convulsing wave that left her trembling, her cunt clenching around him in relentless pulses. He held her through it, his own need a sharp, urgent pain in his gut.
Before she could even recover, he slid out, his cock glistening with her. He pushed her forward onto her hands and knees. The position was familiar, loaded with the memory of the camera, the count to eleven. He spat into his palm, slicked himself, and positioned the broad head at her other entrance.
“This one’s mine,” he whispered, and pushed inside.
Her cry was muffled by the pillow. It was a stretch, a burning, perfect fullness. He gave her no time to adjust, setting a brutal, punctuating pace. Each deep drive was a claim staked, a boundary crossed.
“You think about his phone call while I’m in here,” he growled, one hand fisted in her red hair, the other gripping the soft flesh of her hip. “You think about his voice. And then you feel this. You feel me. You choose.”
“I’ve chosen,” she sobbed, pushing back against him, taking him deeper. “Fuck, I’ve chosen. It’s you. It’s always been you.”
Her submission, her absolute acceptance, undid him. His rhythm broke into frantic, shallow thrusts. He came with a harsh shout, spilling into her ass, his body jerking against hers. He collapsed over her, both of them slick with sweat, breathing in ragged unison.
When he finally slipped out, she didn’t move. He gathered her, turning her to face him. They were a tangle of spent limbs and salt-stained skin.
The room was brighter now. The spreadsheet in her mind was still there, but the numbers were blurry, unimportant. Only this man, this mess, was in sharp focus.
“I need to shower,” she said, her voice hoarse. “And then I need to make the call.”
He nodded, brushing a strand of hair from her sticky forehead. “I’ll make coffee. And I’ll be right here.”
As she walked to the bathroom, every movement reminded her of him. The pleasant ache. The faint, lingering smell of sex on her skin. She stood under the hot water, letting it sluice over her. She rehearsed sentences in her head. Martin, we need to talk. It’s over. I’m so sorry.
None of them sounded right. The truth was simpler and infinitely more cruel: I’ve been empty for years, and he fills me up.
She stepped out, wrapping a towel around herself. From the kitchen, she heard the quiet gurgle of the coffee maker, the soft clink of a cup. The domestic sounds of a new, stolen morning.
She picked up her phone from the nightstand. Eleven missed calls. Four text messages. The last one read: Looking forward to coming home. Miss you.
She deleted it. She found Martin’s number in her favorites, her thumb hovering over the call button. Her heart was a frantic drum against her ribs. This was the point of no return. This was the first concrete step into the chaos.
From the doorway, Ryan leaned, holding two steaming mugs. He didn’t speak. Just waited.
Channah took a breath that felt like her first. She tapped the screen. She put the phone to her ear.
It rang once. Twice.
“Channah?” Martin’s voice, cheerful, tinged with jet lag. “You’re up early. Is everything okay?”
She met Ryan’s eyes across the room. He gave a slow, almost imperceptible nod.
“No, Martin,” she said, her therapist’s calm finally descending, a cold, professional mantle. “Everything is not okay. We need to talk.”