Chapter 4: The Morning After
The fire had guttered to ash. A gray, invasive light bled through the gaps in the heavy curtains, revealing the room for what it was: a disheveled crime scene.Empty glass on the desk.Clothing scattered like shed skin on the Persian rug. The air hung thick with the smells of spent whiskey, woodsmoke, and sex.
Julian was awake before her. He lay rigid on the worn leather of his chair, Maya a warm, heavy weight asleep in his lap.Her bare back was pressed against his chest, her legs tangled with his. His arms, gone numb hours ago, were locked around her. He watched the slow rise and fall of her breathing, the way her dark hair fanned across his forearm. Sticky strands of her saliva—or his release—had dried on his shirt.The physical reality was overwhelming.She was here.In his study. Naked.Asleep.After everything.He shifted, a slight tremor in his thighs. The movement, and the pressure of her body, stirred his blood. A dull, persistent throb began in his groin.An erection, stupid and inevitable, pressed against the curve of her buttock.
Her breath hitched.She stirred, a languid stretch that rubbed her skin against his. Her eyes opened, unfocused for a moment, then awareness snapped into them.She didn’t jump. She didn’t scramble away.She went very still, feeling him hard against her. Then she relaxed back into him, a small, satisfied sound humming in her throat.
“Morning,” she whispered, her voice sleep-roughened.He didn’t answer. The words were trapped behind a wall of dread.The night had been a closed circuit, insulated by darkness and desperation. Dawn was a prosecutor.He untangled his arms, the pins and needles a shocking, petty pain. “I need to piss,” he muttered, his own voice a stranger’s.
He lifted her gently, setting her on her feet. She stood, naked and unselfconscious in the stark light, stretching her arms above her head.He couldn’t look at her. He fumbled with his trousers, pulling them up over his hips, leaving them unfastened as he walked stiffly to the study’s adjacent half-bath.He closed the door but didn’t latch it. He stood over the toilet, head bowed, and pissed a long, acidic stream. The sound was obscenely loud in the small tiled room. He was excruciatingly aware of her on the other side of the door, listening. He flushed, washed his hands in cold water, stared at the face in the mirror—pale, shadowed, a stranger with his eyes.
When he emerged, she was still there.She had not gathered her clothes.She had not covered herself. She stood by the desk, one hand resting on the stacked pages of his unfinished manuscript. Her other hand was between her own legs, fingers idly tracing the folds there, glistening. She looked at him, a direct, unwavering challenge.
“You’re still hard,” she observed, nodding towards the obvious bulge in his trousers.He leaned against the doorframe, a weary fortress. “Maya.”
“Don’t.” She walked towards him, each step a deliberate assertion. “Don’t start building the wall again. Not yet.” She stopped in front of him, so close he could smell her sleep, her skin, the musk of their night. Her fingers went to his waistband, popping the button, tugging the zipper down.His cock sprang free, angrily erect.
“See?” she murmured, wrapping her fingers around him.A slow, firm stroke.“Your body remembers. It wants me. Even if your mind is already writing the apology letter.”
He gripped her wrist, but it wasn’t to stop her.It was to feel the bones under his fingers. “This is a catastrophe.”
“It’s a beginning.” She pushed him back, not towards the chair, but towards the wide, threadbare sofa against the bookshelves.He let himself fall onto it. She followed, straddling him again, but this time it was different.Slower.More deliberate. She guided him to her entrance, already slick and hot from her own touch. She sank onto him inch by agonizing inch, her eyes locked on his, watching every flicker of surrender and fear.
Once he was fully seated inside her, she stopped.Just held him there, buried. She leaned forward, her breasts brushing his chest, her lips at his ear.“I resigned last night.Online. The email is sitting in my drafts folder. All I have to do is hit send.” She began to move, a slow, grinding roll of her hips. “Tell me not to send it.”
He couldn’t. His hands came up to grip her waist, his thumbs digging into the soft flesh of her abdomen.He thrust up, a sharp, involuntary jerk.A gasp escaped her.
“Tell me,” she insisted, her rhythm becoming more urgent, her inner muscles clenching around him. “Tell me to go back to being your teaching assistant. Tell me to stay away from you.”
“Fuck you,” he groaned, his control fraying.He bucked his hips, driving deeper.
“That’s not an answer.” She was bouncing on him now, her tits swaying, her hair a wild curtain.The wet, rhythmic slap of their joining filled the quiet study.“Say it. Say ‘send the email, Maya.’ Say ‘this is a mistake.’”
He flipped her. In one violent, fluid motion he had her on her back on the sofa, her legs hooked over his shoulders.He plunged into her, the new angle shocking, brutal, perfect. She cried out, her nails raking down his shirted back.
“I can’t,” he snarled, the words ripped from him.He drove into her, each thrust a punctuation to his sentence. “I can’t tell you to go. Christ, I can’t.”
It was the truth, ugly and unavoidable. He was addicted to the feel of her, the heat of her, the reckless way she saw him.Not the professor.The man.
“Then don’t,” she panted, her heels digging into his back, urging him on.“Just fuck me.Just want me. We’ll deal with the rest later.”
He fucked her with a kind of focused fury, each stroke a defiance of Holloway, of the rules, of his own better judgment. The pleasure built, a tidal wave blocking out the gray dawn, the unopened mail, the future. He felt her tighten around him, her body bowing off the sofa, a silent scream on her lips as she came.The intense, pulsating squeeze of her orgasm triggered his own. He buried his face in her neck, muffling a roar as he erupted inside her, spurt after hot spurt, claiming her in the only way he knew how.
For a long time, there was only the sound of their ragged breathing.The taste of her sweat on his lips. The weight of his collapsed body half on top of hers.
Then, from downstairs, a sharp, authoritative knock rattled the front door.They froze.Another knock, louder.Insistent.
Julian slowly pulled out of her.The loss felt like a premonition. He stood, zipped his trousers with trembling hands.Maya sat up, pulling her knees to her chest, her eyes wide and suddenly very young.
“The housekeeper?” she whispered, but her voice lacked conviction.“She uses her key. On Tuesdays.” His voice was flat. He walked to the window, peered sideways through the gap in the curtains.A sleek, black university security sedan was parked at the curb. Standing on his front step, imperious in a tailored coat, was Provost Holloway. Beside her, a uniformed campus officer stood with his arms crossed, a passive, threatening presence.
Julian let the curtain fall back.The world, with all its consequences, had just knocked. There would be no more drafts folder.The email had been sent for them.He turned to Maya. Her face had drained of color.She understood.
“Get dressed,” he said, the professor’s cool detachment slotting back into place like armor.“Use the back stairs. Go out through the garden gate.”
“Julian—”
“Now, Maya.” The command was absolute.“This is what I do. Let me do it.”
She moved then, swift and silent, gathering her scattered clothes. She dressed without looking at him, her fingers fumbling with buttons. He watched her, memorizing the curve of her spine as she bent to pull on her slacks, the frantic sway of her hair. This might be the last time. The knock came again, a rapid triple beat that echoed through the silent house.She was at the study door, her coat clutched in her hands. She looked back at him, her eyes full of a terrible, shining resolve. Then she was gone, slipping into the shadowed hallway.
Julian Blackwood straightened his ruined shirt, ran a hand through his salt-and-pepper hair. He walked to his desk, picked up the half-empty glass of stale whiskey, and drained it.The liquid burned a familiar, useless path to his gut. He placed the glass down carefully, exactly in its ring stain.
Then he went downstairs to answer the door.