Chapter 9: Ass to Mouth
The insistent buzzing was her daughter, Maya. Channah knew the tone. She let it go to voicemail, the moment of post-coital peace hardening into a familiar, brittle shell. She pushed herself up from the carpet, her body protesting in new and fascinating ways.
“My daughter,” she said, the words feeling too mundane for the space between them now filled with the smell of sex and syrup.
Ryan nodded, watching her gather the scattered robe from the floor. He sat up, running a hand through his tangled hair. “Everything okay?”
“It will be.” She slipped the robe on, not tying it, and picked up the phone. She listened to the voicemail with her back to him, a therapist’s neutral mask sliding over her features even though he couldn’t see her face. “Just checking in,” Maya’s voice chirped. “You were weird last night. Call me.”
She turned, leaning against the cold marble vanity. “I have to call her back. It’ll be two minutes.”
“Take ten,” he said, standing. He stretched, the muscles in his back and arms pulling taut, a living canvas of ink and memory. “I’ll clean up this warzone.”
He began righting the fallen cloches, stacking plates with a clatter. She dialed, her eyes glued to the flex and play of his shoulders as he worked.
Maya answered on the second ring. “Hey Mom. Where are you? You sound… echoey.”
“In a hotel. Last-minute thing. A networking event ran late, the subway was a nightmare, you know how it is.” The lies came smooth and practiced, coating her tongue with ash.
“In the city? Which hotel?”
Channah closed her eyes. “Near Times Square. Look, honey, I’m about to run into a breakfast meeting. Everything’s fine. We’ll talk tonight, okay? I love you.”
She ended the call before the interrogation could deepen. The guilt was a cold stone in her stomach, momentarily eclipsing the warm, throbbing ache he’d left inside her.
“Networking event?” Ryan asked without turning around. He was wiping a spill from the cart with a napkin.
“It’s what you say.”
“You never were a good liar.” He finally looked at her. “It’s written all over you. The guilt. The thrill. The 'fuck-it-all' defiance. It’s why I could never read your cards.”
A bitter laugh escaped her. “You read me just fine. You always did. That was the problem.”
He tossed the napkin onto the cart and approached her. The scent of their mingled sweat and her perfume rose from his skin. He didn’t touch her. He just stood there, a foot away, his presence a physical pressure. “What was the problem, Channah? Spell it out for me now. We had the fuck. We had the 69, the anal, the swallowed come, the whole goddamn menu. So what was it, twenty-five years ago, that was so insurmountable?”
The air left her lungs. This was the cliff they’d been dancing toward since his first text. The sex was the lightning, but this was the coming thunder.
“You left,” she said, the words simple and devastating.
“I got a fellowship in Berlin. For a year. I asked you to come.”
“You asked me to follow. To put my degree on hold, to be the girlfriend in a foreign city while you did your important work. You presented it as a done deal, Ryan. Not a discussion. A ‘this is what’s happening’.”
His jaw tightened. “And you said no. A flat, cold, final no. You chose your path over ours.”
“I chose my path! I was finally getting somewhere after years of waitressing and therapy. I had a shot at my own practice. You were the one who made it a choice!”
The silence that followed was charged, the ghost of their younger, more brittle selves standing between them. The neon from outside pulsed, staining his face red, then blue.
His voice dropped, losing its edge. “I thought you’d fight for us. When you didn’t, I thought… I thought I’d misunderstood your commitment. So I stopped calling. And you never called either.”
Tears, hot and sudden, blurred her vision. “I was waiting for you to understand why I couldn’t go. I was waiting for you to come back.”
He did touch her then. One hand came up, his thumb brushing a tear from her cheekbone with a roughness that felt like absolution. “Stubborn, stupid kids,” he whispered.
His mouth found hers. This kiss held none of the prior night’s frantic hunger. It was a slow, deep exploration, a tasting of regret and years lost. It was an apology and a accusation, all in the slick slide of his tongue against hers.
The robe fell open. His hands slid inside, palming her full breasts, his thumbs rubbing circles over her tightened nipples. The chill from the marble vanity seeped into her back, a sharp contrast to the heat flooding her front.
He broke the kiss, his breaths coming harsh against her neck. “I’m not asking you to follow me now.”
“I know.”
“I’m asking you to get back on the bed.”
Her stomach flipped. “And then what?”
“And then I’m going to fuck you like I should have every day for the last twenty-five years. I’m going to fuck you until neither of us remembers how to be stubborn or stupid. Until all we remember is this.”
He walked her backward until her knees hit the mattress. She let herself fall, and he came down over her, not between her legs, but lying atop her, his full weight pinning her to the tangled sheets. He kissed her again, deeper, his erection a hard, urgent line against her thigh.
Then he shifted, sliding down her body. He hooked his hands under her knees, pushing her legs up and apart, then further, folding her almost in half, exposing her completely. She was swollen, glistening, the dark pink of her sex parted and waiting.
“Look at you,” he breathed, his voice thick. “So fucking perfect. Mine.”
He didn’t use his mouth. He positioned the broad head of his cock at her entrance, wet with her own slickness and the remnants of his earlier release from her ass. He looked her in the eye, holding her gaze with an intensity that felt more invasive than any physical act.
“Tell me you want it.”
“I want it.”
“Tell me you need it.”
A sob caught in her throat. “I need it. Ryan, please.”
He drove into her, a single, deep, complete stroke that filled her so utterly she saw stars. There was no finesse, no patient build. It was a claiming. He set a brutal, pounding rhythm from the first moment, each thrust jolting her up the bed. The headboard slammed against the wall in a steady, percussive beat.
“This cunt,” he grunted, his hips pistoning. “This sweet, tight cunt. It should have been mine every goddamn night.”
His words were filthy, raw, and they unlocked something in her. She met each thrust, lifting her hips, taking him deeper. “It was! It always was! Fuck! No one else… it was never like this!”
He shifted, pulling her legs over his shoulders, changing the angle. On the next thrust, he hit a spot so deep and exquisite her vision blurred. A scream, ragged and real, tore from her throat.
“Yeah, scream,” he growled, his own control fraying. “Scream for what we wasted. Come all over my cock. Do it.”
The command, the visceral, physical truth of his assault, tipped her over. The orgasm crashed through her with shocking violence, a wave of pure sensation that had her clawing at his back, her cries muffled against his shoulder.
Feeling her internal muscles clamp and spasm around him, he lost his rhythm. His thrusts became erratic, desperate. “Channah… fuck, I’m gonna…”
“Inside,” she begged, locking her heels behind his back. “Come inside me. Now.”
With a final, guttural shout, he obeyed, surging into her as he emptied himself, pulse after hot pulse flooding her depths. He collapsed onto her, his weight a sweet, crushing anchor.
They lay fused together, slick with sweat, hearts hammering against each other’s ribs. The city’ sounds—a distant siren, the hum of thousands of lives—filtered back in.
His lips moved against her damp collarbone. “I have to fly back to Seattle tomorrow.”
The words were a cold splash of reality. She simply held him tighter, her fingers tightening in his hair. The momentum they’d built wasn’t ending. It was curving, turning into a terrifying, open road.
“Then we have tonight,” she said, her voice calm with a certainty she didn’t feel.
He lifted his head. His eyes, usually so restless, were still. “And then?”
She touched his cheek, tracing the line of his jaw. She didn’t have an answer. Not yet. All she had was the smell of him on her skin, the profound, lingering stretch inside her, and the terrifying, exhilarating sense of a story that was far from over.