Chapter 10: The Gallery's Aftermath
The key turned in the lock, a sound impossibly loud in the silent hallway. I pushed the door open, my body a catalogue of dull aches and specific, lingering sensations. The chill of the studio still clung to my bones beneath the hot shower’s phantom warmth.
He was sitting in the armchair by the window, a silhouette against the city’s night-glow. Not asleep. Waiting. A glass of something amber dangled from his fingers. The low light caught the tension in his forearm.
I didn’t speak. I let my clutch drop to the floor with a soft thud. The sound seemed to unlock him. He set the glass down on the windowsill with a precise click and stood. He moved across the room slowly, his eyes never leaving me. He didn’t look angry. He looked ferociously intent.
He stopped inches away. The air between us crackled. He smelled of client-dinner scotch and his own clean sweat. His hand came up, not to touch my face, but to the collar of my dress. His fingers found the slim strap and pushed it aside, revealing the top of my shoulder. A bruise was already blooming there, a perfect, dark oval from Jules Thorne’s punishing grip.
Rohan’s thumb stroked over the mark. His breath hitched, just once. Then his eyes met mine, and in them I saw a storm of want, curiosity, and a fierce, territorial fire.
“On your knees,” he said, his voice rough, unused.
A shiver, electric and sharp, raced down my spine. I obeyed, sinking down onto the polished hardwood, the chill seeping through my dress. He unbuttoned his trousers, freeing his cock. It was already fully hard, thick and ruddy in the dim light. He didn’t guide it to my lips. He simply held himself, looking down at me.
“Open.”
I did. He gripped the back of my head, his fingers tangling in my hair, not gently. He fed his cock into my mouth, an inch, two, then with a sudden, aggressive push, he filled it, sliding deep until the head bumped the back of my throat. I gagged, tears springing to my eyes.
“Suck it,” he commanded, his hips beginning a slow, shallow fuck into my mouth. “Suck my cock clean while you think about his.”
The obscenity, the directness, shattered any last pretense. This was our new language. I relaxed my jaw, working my tongue along his shaft as he moved, my saliva slicking him. He watched himself disappear between my lips, his expression dark with concentration.
“Did he fuck this pretty mouth?” he grunted, picking up pace.
I couldn’t answer, could only moan around him. He took it as affirmation.
“Good,” he breathed, the word strained. “Now it’s mine again.”
His thrusts became deeper, more urgent, a possessive reclamation. The head of his cock tapped my throat relentlessly. I let him use me, my own arousal a throbbing, wet heat between my legs. Just as I felt his muscles tighten, he pulled out with a wet pop, glistening and slick.
“Up. Turn around. Bend over the couch.”
My legs trembled as I rose. I faced the back of the sofa, leaning over it, presenting myself. I heard him kneel behind me. His hands pushed my dress up around my waist. His breath was hot on the backs of my thighs. Then his mouth was on me, his tongue a broad, desperate stroke through my folds.
He ate me like a starving man. But there was a method to it. He lapped at me, drank from me, his tongue delving deep, then circling my clit with a furious focus. He was tasting. Consuming. Erasing. The residue of Jules, the cold studio, the clinical fuck—all of it was being devoured by Rohan’s heated, messy hunger.
“You’re soaked,” he muttered against me, his voice muffled. “So fucking wet. Is this from him? Or from me right now?”
“Both,” I gasped, pushing back against his face. “It’s always both now.”
He groaned, the vibration against my clit making me cry out. He worked me with his tongue until my hips were jerking uncontrollably, until I was on the brink. Then he stopped, rising to his feet.
I felt the blunt, familiar pressure of him, not at my entrance, but pressing against my asshole. He was slick with my own wetness. We hadn’t done this since the villa. My body clenched in involuntary resistance.
“Every detail,” he growled, his hands gripping my hips hard. “You’re going to tell me every fucking detail while I take you here. While I own this.”
He pushed. A sharp, burning stretch. I screamed into the couch cushion as the broad head of his cock breached me, my body struggling to accommodate him. He didn’t stop, didn’t pause. He fed himself into me slowly, relentlessly, until he was fully sheathed, his balls pressed against my soaked cunt. The fullness was astronomical, a brutal invasion that somehow, dizzyingly, fed the void.
“Now talk,” he demanded, beginning to move with short, deep strokes that forced ragged gasps from my throat. “Where did he take you?”
“His studio,” I panted, the words torn out of me with each thrust. “Upstairs from the gallery. It was cold. Smelled like paint and turpentine.”
“What did he do?” Rohan’s pace increased, the burn settling into a deep, fulsome ache.
“He… he made me bend over a table. A drafting table.” The memory fused with the present sensation, overloading my nerves. “He slapped me. Called his cock a palette knife.”
Rohan cursed, his fingers digging into my flesh. “He came in you?”
“Yes.”
“Where?”
“Inside. My cunt. He filled me up and then he… he just washed his hands.”
Rohan’s rhythm became punishing, a hard, driving pistoning that stole my breath. “And you? Did you come for him?”
“Yes,” I wailed, the admission freeing something. “He made me. He was so cold about it. He said he was stripping me back to primer.”
That did it. Rohan’s control snapped. With a roar that seemed to shake the room, he slammed into me one last time, his body bowing over mine as he emptied himself deep into my ass, a hot, claiming flood that felt like a brand. The violence of his release triggered my own, a second, shocking convolution that clenched around the impossible fullness, milking him dry.
We collapsed together onto the floor, a tangle of limbs and spent breath. He was still inside me, softening, our sweat cooling. He nuzzled my neck, his breathing ragged.
“A palette knife,” he finally murmured, the words a puff of air against my skin. “Pretentious fucker.”
A laugh, weak and watery, bubbled out of me. He joined in, his chest vibrating against my back. The tension shattered, leaving a raw, tender clarity. He pulled out gently, and we lay there on the rug, staring at the ceiling.
“Did it work?” he asked after a long silence, his hand finding mine. “The stripping back to primer?”
I thought of the empty room Jules described. “No. It just made me aware of the walls.” I turned to look at him. “This… you raging at me, fucking the memory out of me… this feels more like home.”
He propped himself up on an elbow, his face serious. “I’m not raging at you, Nisha. I’m… meeting you. In this new place. It’s fucking terrifying and hot as hell.” He traced the bruise on my shoulder. “I want to know the map of you, even the parts others chart.”
The honesty was a balm. For weeks—months, ever since the surgery—we had been performing versions of ourselves: the transformed woman, the supportive partner, the adventurous lovers. Now, covered in the physical evidence of our separate explorations, we were just us: flawed, hungry, trying to love each other through the wreckage of our own making.
We eventually moved to the bed. He fetched a warm cloth and cleaned me with a tenderness that contrasted violently with his earlier possession. As he wiped between my thighs, he paused.
“Your period’s late,” he said, not looking at me.
The words hung in the dark. I’d been ignoring the calendar, the familiar low ache that hadn’t arrived. The miraculous, terrible system Dr. Kashap had built was cycling on without my permission.
“A few days,” I said, my voice small.
He finished cleaning me and lay down, pulling me against him. “The villa was… what, three weeks ago?”
The math was simple. Dozens of men. No protection. The possibility was a cold stone in my gut. The ultimate vacancy, filled.
“We’ll test tomorrow,” he said, his arm tightening around me. There was no accusation. Just a statement of fact. A new variable in our equation.
I fell asleep with his hand splayed protectively over my lower abdomen, the very site of our undoing or our becoming. The void wasn’t patient anymore. It was potentially, perilously, fertile.