Chapter 9: The Second Interview
The taste of him lingered in my mouth for hours, a bitter salt beneath the mint of the gum I chewed until my jaw ached. It was a brand. I carried it through the sterile, buzzing fluorescence of the library’s public floors, shelving biographies with robotic precision. My body felt like a rented room, recently vacated by a loud and careless tenant. The soreness between my legs was from Riya; the faint, phantom ache in my throat was from him. I was a catalog of violations, self-administered.
Arjun called twice. I sent both calls to voicemail. His patience, once a comforting blanket, now felt like a suffocating shroud. He would want words, explanations, a map to a country that no longer existed—the country where I was his Medha, sweet and whole. That girl had cracked open on Riya’s floor and been scraped out in a library storeroom.
At precisely 4:55 PM, my phone buzzed with a new text from the unknown number. My office. The door will be unlocked.
A cold thrill, entirely separate from desire, trickled down my spine. This was the transaction, clear and direct. No pretence of an interview. No resume on the desk. I walked past the circulation desk, gave a small, meaningless smile to the elderly volunteer, and pushed through the door to the administrative corridor. It was deserted, the cubicles empty shells. The only light spilled from the glass wall of his office at the end of the hall.
He was standing by the window, his back to me, silhouetted against the dying orange sky. The bottle of whiskey was open on the desk, a single glass beside it, half-full. He didn’t turn when I entered. I closed the door softly behind me. The click of the latch was deafening.
“Lock it,” he said, his voice a gravelly thing.
I turned the lock. The mechanism engaged with a solid, final thunk.
He finally turned. He looked older than he had just hours before, the lines around his eyes deeper, carved by shame and a hunger that had taken root anyway. His tie was loose, his collar unbuttoned. He drank from the glass, his eyes never leaving me. They were the colour of a muddy river.
“You shouldn’t have come back,” he said, but it was a script. We both knew our parts.
“You texted me.” I remained near the door, letting him look. I’d changed in the staff bathroom—a simple black dress, sleeveless, cut low in the front. It was cheap polyester, but it clung.
“I shouldn’t have.” He set the glass down. “This is… goddamn stupid.”
“Then tell me to leave.” My challenge hung in the air, mingling with the scent of whiskey and his expensive soap.
He didn’t. He just stared, his chest rising and falling a little too fast. The power shift was subtle, a seesaw pausing at its apex. He had the job, the age, the ring. I had the terrible, devastating fact that he wanted me more than he feared the consequences.
I walked forward slowly, my flats silent on the plush carpet. I stopped in front of his desk, directly in his line of sight. Reaching behind my neck, I found the zipper of my dress. I pulled it down in one slow, continuous motion. The sound was like a sigh. The dress slumped to my waist, then I shimmied, letting it fall the rest of the way to pool at my feet. I stood before him in only the black lace bra and the matching panties I’d bought this afternoon, a deliberate replacement for the pair Riya had soiled.
His breath left him in a husky rush. “Christ.”
“Do you like them?” I asked, my voice flat, a salesgirl demonstrating a product.
In two strides he was on me. His hands were rough, pawing at the lace, his mouth crashing down on mine. He tasted of peat smoke and regret. I kissed him back with a cold, mechanical intensity, my tongue mapping the familiar terrain of his teeth. He fumbled with the clasp of my bra, frustration making his fingers clumsy. I reached back and did it for him, letting it fall away. He groaned, his hands squeezing my breasts, his thumbs scraping over my nipples, harsh and proprietary.
“Turn around,” he growled against my mouth. “Bend over the desk.”
A direct order. A replication. My stomach tightened, but I obeyed. The polished wood was cool against my forearms. I stared at the grain, at a deep scratch near the edge. He pushed my panties down to my knees. The air was cold on my exposed skin. I heard the rasp of his zipper, the rustle of his trousers being shoved down.
He didn’t enter me slowly. He spat onto his hand, slicked himself roughly, and then he was pushing inside, a blunt, relentless invasion that forced a choked gasp from my throat. There was no preparation, no tenderness. It was a claiming.
“Fuck,” he hissed, his hands clamping on my hips, his fingers digging in hard enough to bruise. “Tighter than yesterday. Like a goddamn vice.”
He set a brutal, driving pace from the start. Each thrust slammed me against the desk’s edge, jolting my body. The pain was a bright, clarifying star in the center of the numbness. He was fucking me with a singular, focused rage—at me, at himself, at the situation. It was pure physical expulsion.
“You like this, you dirty little cunt?” he panted, his voice thick with exertion and self-loathing. “You like getting bent over a desk and used like a whore?”
I didn’t answer. I focused on the scratch in the wood, on the rhythmic creak of the floorboards under our combined weight, on the wet, slapping sound of his flesh hitting mine. My own arousal was a distant, clinical response, a physiological betrayal. A heat built low in my belly, unrelated to him, born from the sheer degradation of the act.
He leaned over me, his sweat-damp shirt pressing against my bare back, his mouth at my ear. “Answer me. Do you like it?”
“Yes,” I breathed, the lie as easy as breathing.
He grunted, one hand snaking around to roughly rub my clit. The contact was crude, almost angry, but it sent a jagged bolt of sensation through the haze. I arched back against him, a silent plea for more pressure, for it to be over, for it to never end.
“Gonna come,” he warned, his rhythm becoming jagged, erratic. “Where do you want it? Huh? Tell me where you want my fucking come.”
The vulgarity, the sheer ugliness of the demand, was the final trigger. My orgasm tore through me, a silent, seizing wave that locked my muscles and blinded me to the scratch on the desk, to everything but the violent pulse between my legs. He felt me clench around him and let out a choked roar, driving deep and holding there as he emptied himself inside me with a shudder that racked his whole frame.
For a long moment, the only sound was our ragged breathing. He stayed buried in me, softening, his weight heavy on my back. Then he pulled out. A hot trickle of him seeped down my inner thigh. I stayed bent over the desk, unable to move, staring at that single, deep scratch.
He straightened his clothes behind me. I heard the clink of the whiskey glass, the glug of the bottle. When I finally pushed myself upright and turned, he was back at the window, glass in hand, staring out at the neon-dusted city. He didn’t look at me.
I pulled my panties up, the fabric damp and sticky. I picked my dress up from the floor, slipped it on, zipped it. The mundane actions felt surreal.
“The volunteer coordinator will have your schedule,” he said to the window, his voice drained. “Don’t come here again unless I text you.”
I didn’t answer. I walked to the door, unlocked it, and stepped back into the fluorescent glare of the hallway. The door swung shut behind me, cutting off the warm, whiskey-scented gloom.
My phone buzzed in my clutch as I walked, my steps echoing in the empty corridor. It was Arjun. A string of texts this time.
Medha, please.
I’m worried.
I love you.
Just tell me you’re okay.
The words blurred. I stopped, leaning against a cool cinderblock wall. I typed a reply, my fingers steady.
I’m fine. Just tired. Need some space.
His response was immediate. Space? What does that mean? Did I do something?
Before I could answer, another notification popped up. Riya. A single image. It was a close-up of the purple strap-on, discarded on her bedroom floor. The text beneath it read: Forgot something.
I stared at the two conversations, side by side on the bright screen. One full of pleading, tender concern. The other, a crude, silent challenge. I was the link between them, a live wire strung between two poles, humming with a dangerous current.
I slid the phone back into my bag. The taste in my mouth was still there, underneath the mint. It was the taste of the secret, of the power, of the hollow, expanding space inside me where a conscience used to be. I walked out of the library into the cooling evening, the city’s lights swallowing me whole.
I walked out of the library into the cooling evening, the city’s lights swallowing me whole. The air was a balm, but it couldn’t reach the internal heat, the sticky residue of him drying on my thighs. My feet carried me on autopilot, not home, but to the only geography that made sense—the crumbling brick facade of Riya’s apartment building. The text she’d sent, that image, was a hook in my ribs.
I climbed the stairs, each step echoing the dull throb between my legs. Her door was, as ever, unlocked. The scent of sandalwood incense and last night’s red wine hit me first. She was on the sofa, scrolling through her phone, a half-smoked joint smoldering in an ashtray beside her. She didn’t look up.
“You smell like a barbershop and bad decisions,” she said, her voice flat.
“I feel like one.” I dropped my bag, the sound loud in the quiet room. The polite fiction of my day collapsed. “He fucked me over his desk. Again.”
Finally, she looked. Her gaze was a physical scrape, taking in my mussed hair, the slight tremor in my hands. “And?”
“And I came.” The admission was toneless. “It didn’t mean anything. It was just a… function.”
Riya stubbed out the joint, the movement sharp. She stood and walked over to me, a predator assessing wounded prey. She leaned in, her nose almost touching my neck, and inhaled deeply. “I can smell him. That stale, papery smell. It’s all over you.” Her hand snapped up, fingers tangling in my hair and yanking my head back. “You let him mark you.”
“It’s just a smell,” I whispered, my scalp burning.
“It’s a claim.” Her other hand found the zipper of my dress and wrenched it down. The fabric parted. “These are my clothes. This is my body he’s pretending to use.” She pushed the dress off my shoulders, letting it fall. Her eyes were black with a possessive fury. “On your knees. Now.”
The command, so different from his, sparked a different kind of fire. I sank down, the rough weave of her rug biting into my skin. She kept her grip on my hair, guiding my face to the junction of her thighs. She was wearing only an old t-shirt, nothing underneath. The musk of her was immediate, real, a dark forest after the chemical sterility of his office.
“Clean it off,” she ordered, shoving my face into her. “Lick his ghost off my skin. Make me taste like me again.”
I obeyed. My tongue delved into her, lapping at her folds, seeking the familiar salt and heat. I sucked her clit into my mouth, not with skill, but with a desperate, wiping fervor. I was trying to erase one taste with another, one violation with a chosen degradation. She moaned, her hips jerking, her grip on my hair tightening to the point of pain.
“Harder,” she gasped. “Stop being nice. Fuck me with your tongue.”
I pushed my tongue inside her, fucking her with short, rough strokes. I tasted her arousal, felt her clench around nothing. The rhythm was frantic, a exorcism. She came with a sharp cry, her thighs clamping around my ears, her release flooding my mouth. I drank it down, a bitter sacrament.
She pulled me up by the hair, her breath coming in ragged pants. “Strip the rest. On the floor. On your back.”
I shucked my bra and panties, the lace still damp. I lay back on the rug, the fibers scratching my skin. She stood over me, looking down, her expression unreadable. She reached for the harness on the floor, the purple silicone glistening in the low light. She stepped into it, fastened it with a series of sharp clicks. She loomed above me, a dark silhouette against the ceiling light.
“He demands more, doesn’t he?” she said, her voice low. “That pathetic, hungry look. He’ll always demand more. And you’ll give it, because you’re empty enough to be filled with anything.”
The words were knives. She dropped to her knees between my legs, spreading them wide with her hands. She didn’t use lube. She spat into her palm, slicked the fake cock, and positioned the blunt head at my entrance. She looked me straight in the eyes. “This is me. Remember it.”
She plunged in. The dry stretch was a white-hot brand, a tearing fullness that stole my breath. I cried out, a raw, unfiltered sound. She didn’t pause. She set a punishing, deep rhythm, each thrust a brutal reminder of ownership. The harness base ground against my clit, a ruthless counterpoint to the internal invasion.
“You’re a hole,” she chanted, her voice breaking with the effort of her strokes. “For him. For me. For anyone who knows how to ask. Isn’t that right?”
I couldn’t speak. I could only arch and take it, the pain mutating into a terrifying, all-consuming pleasure. My body was betraying me, convulsing around the invading shape, welcoming the punishment. My nails dug into my own palms.
“Come on it,” she snarled, her pace becoming erratic, savage. “Come on this fake cock and prove me right.”
My climax was a seizure, a silent, wrenching event that ripped through my core and left me gasping. She fucked me through it, prolonging the sensitivity into agony, until she finally stilled, buried to the hilt, her own body trembling with spent fury.
We stayed like that, connected by the synthetic link, both of us breathing as if we’d been drowned. Slowly, she pulled out. The emptiness she left was cavernous. She unbuckled the harness, let it fall aside, and collapsed next to me on the floor. Our shoulders touched. We stared at the water-stained ceiling.
My phone buzzed from inside my discarded bag. Then again. And again. Arjun. A cascade of concern, a siren song from a simpler world.
Riya’s hand found mine, her fingers lacing through mine, gripping with a bone-crushing finality. “So,” she said, her voice hollow. “What are you going to tell him?”
The silence after Riya’s question stretched, thick with the smell of sex and spent anger. The ceiling tile above us was stained a faint brown, a water mark from some forgotten leak. “I don’t know,” I finally said, which was the truest thing I’d uttered in days.I pulled my hand from hers, the contact suddenly unbearable, and pushed myself up. My body felt loose, unstrung. I gathered my clothes from the floor, the cheap black dress a crumpled confession.
I dressed in the dim bathroom, avoiding my reflection in the smudged mirror.The girl there was a stranger with my tired eyes. Back in the main room, Riya hadn’t moved.She watched me, her gaze analytic, detached. “You’ll lie,” she stated, a simple forecast.“You’ll tell him you’re working late. That you’re studying. You’ll fuck that librarian again to make the lie feel true.” She lit a cigarette, the flare of the match briefly illuminating the hollows of her cheeks. “Then you’ll come back here so I can wipe him off you. It’s a neat little system.”
Her cynicism was a cold compress on a fever.It didn’t heal; it just numbed. I didn’t argue.My phone, as if summoned, vibrated again in my bag. A different number this time.Davies. The text was an address in the Hills, followed by a time: 9 PM.No please.No question.Just coordinates. A part of me, the part that could still feel revulsion, recoiled. The larger part, the hollowed-out cavern, saw only the next logical step in the system Riya had described.
“I have to go,” I said, my voice unfamiliar to my own ears.
Riya exhaled a plume of smoke, her lips curling in a faint, terrible smile. “Of course you do.”
The house was a modernist box of glass and pale stone, clinging to the hillside like a predator’s lair. It was all sharp angles and severe lines, so different from the warm, cluttered chaos of my own home or Riya’s bohemian mess. My heart was a frantic bird in my throat as I stood on the exposed concrete porch.I had followed the instruction perfectly. The sheer red dress was a second skin, the chill night air whispering against my bare nipples, my nakedness beneath a blatant, thrilling vulnerability.I pressed the bell.
He opened the door, and I saw the conflict in his eyes—lust warring with guilt. The foyer behind him was vast, minimalist, cold. He looked older here, softer in a cashmere sweater and dark jeans, divorced from his desk’s authority.
“My wife is out of town,” he said, as if that excused everything.The words were a pathetic moat around his crumbling castle of respectability.
I stepped inside, pressed my body against his, and felt his cock harden instantly against my thigh through the soft denim. “I don’t care about your wife,” I whispered, my hands finding his belt, unzipping his pants. “I care about this.”
I dropped to my knees on the cold Italian tile. I took his already-swelling cock in my mouth and deep-throated him without warning, without ceremony. He groaned, his hands fisting in my hair, pulling almost too hard as I sucked him, my tongue swirling around the flared head. “Fuck, you’re so good at this,” he gasped, his hips jerking forward.
I pulled off with a wet pop, spit onto my hand, and slicked his shaft, stroking him while I looked up into his dilated eyes. “I want you to fuck me raw,” I said, the filth leaving my lips cleanly, precisely. “I want to feel you come inside me.”
A sound escaped him, half-groan, half-surrender. He hauled me up, his hands rough on the flimsy fabric, and lifted me onto the cold marble of a nearby console table. He ripped the red dress open, buttons pinging onto the floor, and buried his face between my legs. His tongue was desperate, hungry, lapping at my clit like a man starved. The contrast—the elegant, sterile home, the animal hunger of his mouth—tipped me over an edge. I came within minutes, a sharp, gasping release, my juices coating his stubbled chin.“Now,” I demanded, spreading my legs wider on the hard stone.
He drove into me in one brutal stroke, filling me completely. The marble was unforgiving against my spine.His pace was frantic, animalistic, each thrust a punctuation mark in a sentence of ruin. The only sounds were skin slapping skin, his ragged grunts, the shaky rattle of the table. “Yes, fuck me,” I screamed, my nails raking down his shoulders, drawing faint red lines.I wanted him to ruin me, to make the outside match the empty inside.
He came with a roar, his body locking, his hot seed flooding my cunt in pulsing jets. It felt like a violation, a claim, a toxicity seeping into my core. He collapsed against me, his weight heavy and suffocating, his breath hot on my neck.
“This is just the beginning,” I whispered against his ear, the words tasting like a prophecy.
He flinched, then slowly peeled himself away. He wouldn’t look at me as he tucked himself back into his jeans.“You should go.” His voice was ruined, shredded.
I slid off the counter, my legs unsteady.The red dress was destroyed, hanging open. I clutched it around me, the sticky evidence of him trickling down my inner thigh. He walked to the door and held it open, staring at a point on the floor.I walked past him, back into the night.
The drive home was a blur of streetlights and shame. His cum leaked into the driver’s seat of my old car, a cheap, degrading fact. My phone, plugged into the charger, lit up with another cascade of notifications from Arjun. The previews were shards of a life I’d left behind: Please.I’m here for you.Just talk to me. I love you so much it hurts.I parked in my driveway but didn’t get out. I just sat in the dark, the dome light off, watching the familiar windows of my house. A shadow moved past the kitchen window—my mom, probably making tea.A normal ritual in a normal home. I was a fossilized secret just outside its walls.I picked up my phone. My thumb hovered over Arjun’s name.I could call. I could pour it all out, the library, Riya, the marble counter, the hollowness. His love would absorb it, twist it into a tragedy he’d try to fix. He’d hold me and tell me I was still good, and his forgiveness would feel like the worst punishment of all.
Instead, I opened a new text to him.My fingers were cold and steady. I need to see you, I typed.Tomorrow night.My place.My parents will be out. I hesitated, then added the final, quiet lock.I’m ready.
I hit send before I could think.The message delivered, then showed as read. Three dots appeared, pulsed for an eternity, then disappeared. Then his reply came, simple and devastating in its trust: I’ll be there.I love you.I dropped the phone onto the passenger seat. The hollow space inside me expanded, a vast, accepting darkness.Tomorrow, I would give Arjun what he’d always wanted. I would gift him the ripped-open ruin of me. It felt like the most honest thing I’d done in weeks. I got out of the car, the dried streaks on my thighs cracking as I moved, and walked toward the warm, ignorant light of home.