Chapter 3: The Call Answered
The silence after sending the text was a vacuum. Krissy stood in the center of the bedroom, the phone a cold, dead weight in her hand. The jewelry box sat open on the dresser, a silent accomplice. From the study, no sound emerged. Tim was either still on the floor or had moved to some other corner of their shared ruin. She didn’t check. The part of her that would care was sealed behind a wall of glacial resolve.
Her phone buzzed, vibrating against her palm. Not a text. A call. The screen glowed with the number from the card. Her heart, which had been beating a dull, subdued rhythm, suddenly hammered against her ribs. She answered, lifting the device to her ear but saying nothing.
“Krissy?” His voice was familiar, that low, easy baritone, but it was layered with caution. “I got your text. What’s going on?”
She closed her eyes. “The deal changed.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means he knows. He… agrees.” The words tasted like ash. “Can you come over?”
A pause. She could hear the hum of his car, the soft chirp of a turn signal. He was already mobile. “Krissy, listen. This sounds fucked up. Last time was… complicated. But it had an end. This ‘agreement’ shit? That’s a whole different kind of messy. Are you sure?”
“I’ve never been more sure of anything.” The certainty in her own voice shocked her. It was true. In this devastated landscape, the need for him was the one solid, undeniable truth. “Please, Marcus. I need you to come here. Now.”
Another, shorter pause. A sigh, not of reluctance, but of surrender to the inevitable. “Okay. I’m about ten minutes away. Just… be sure.”
“I am.”
He ended the call. The ten minutes stretched into an eternity. She didn’t change. She stayed in the soft pajamas, her uniform of domesticity. She didn’t brush her hair. She didn’t check her face in the mirror. She simply stood, waiting, listening to the silence of the apartment. It was a different silence now, charged, anticipatory. The lavender scent from the sheets was cloying, suffocating. She opened the bedroom window a crack, letting in a slip of cold night air that carried the distant scent of wet pavement.
She heard the quiet click of the front door opening. Tim, going out. Or coming in? No, it was opening. He was leaving. Fleeing the scene of the crime he had sanctioned. She felt a vicious spike of satisfaction, followed immediately by a plunge into deeper loneliness. She was truly alone now. Alone, and waiting for a man who was not her partner.
A soft knock at the apartment door, minutes later. Firm, decisive. Not Tim’s hesitant tap.
She walked through the living room, her bare feet silent on the wood floor. She didn’t look toward the study. She unlocked the door and opened it.
Marcus stood in the hallway, a stark contrast to the muted tones of her home. He wore dark jeans and a grey Henley stretched across his broad shoulders. His short dark hair was slightly messy, as if he’d run his hands through it. His rugged face was serious, his eyes searching hers with an intensity that felt like a physical touch. He held a convenience store bag in one hand.
“Hey,” he said, his voice quiet.
She didn’t answer. Words were beyond her. She grabbed the front of his shirt, fistfuls of soft cotton, and pulled him inside, kicking the door shut behind him with her foot. The sound of the deadbolt engaging was final.
Before he could speak, she crushed her mouth to his. It wasn’t a kiss of passion, but of desperation, a guttural transfer of need. She poured every ounce of her confusion, her fury, her devastating emptiness into it. Her teeth scraped his lip. He tasted of coffee and mint.
He made a low sound against her mouth, a groan of understanding. He dropped the bag, and his hands came up to frame her face, not to gentle her, but to hold her still, to meet her frenzy with a controlled, answering hunger. His tongue swept into her mouth, claiming, dominating. The kiss deepened, turning wet and deep and filthy.
She broke away, gasping for air, her hands already moving to his belt. Her fingers, clumsy with urgency, fumbled with the leather and the metal buckle.
“Krissy, wait,” he breathed, his own respiration ragged.
“No waiting,” she snarled, the sound foreign to her own ears. She finally got the belt open, the button of his jeans undone, the zipper dragged down. She shoved her hand inside, past the waistband of his boxers, and closed her fingers around him.
He was already hard, thick and heavy and hot in her grasp. A strangled gasp escaped him. He was bigger than she remembered, the memory having softened and idealized the reality. This was the reality: a formidable, living weight that made her insides clench with remembered stretch and a fresh, sharp greed.
“Fuck,” he muttered, his forehead dropping to hers. “You’re burning up.”
“I need you,” she panted, her words a raw scrape. “I need you to fuck me. I need to not feel anything else.”
He understood. He saw the tear tracks dried on her cheeks, the wild, shattered look in her green eyes. He cupped the back of her head, his fingers tangling in her chestnut hair. “Where?”
“Bedroom.”
She turned, leading him by the hand that still held him, a crude, intimate tether. She didn’t glance at the living room, at the couch, at any of the landmarks of her life with Tim. She marched them to the bedroom, to the scene of their first crime, now to be the venue for their sustained rebellion.
The room was as she’d left it. The lavender-scented sheets were rumpled from her restless night, the comforter twisted. The single lamp cast long, dramatic shadows. She went to the bed, turned, and pushed him. He sat down heavily on the edge of the mattress, his eyes never leaving hers.
She didn’t undress him further. She didn’t undress herself. She simply climbed onto the bed, straddling his thighs, her pajama pants a frustrating barrier. She yanked at the drawstring, loosening them, and shoved them down along with her panties just enough to free herself. She was wet, a shocking, automatic slickness that shamed her even as it empowered her.
She reached for him again, guiding him to her entrance. The broad, smooth head pressed against her, a familiar and terrifying pressure.
“Look at me,” he said, his voice a rough command.
She forced her eyes open, meeting his dark, focused gaze.
“This is what you want?” he asked, each word deliberate. “This, knowing he’s out there? Knowing this changes everything?”
“Yes,” she hissed, and she sank down.
It was a slow, brutal impalement. She took him inside her in one relentless, downward stroke, swallowing his massive length until she was fully seated, her body stretched to a breathtaking limit. The fullness was immediate, overwhelming, a sensation so profound it wiped her mind clean. A sharp, punched-out cry tore from her throat. Her head fell back, her spine arching.
“Jesus,” Marcus groaned, his hands flying to her hips, his fingers digging into the soft flesh. “You’re so fucking tight. Even tighter than last time.”
She began to move. There was no tenderness, no exploratory rhythm. She rode him with a frantic, piston-like intensity, lifting herself almost completely off him before slamming back down, taking him deep, wanting to be split open by the force of it. The wet, slapping sound of their joining filled the room, obscenely loud. Her breasts, unconfined beneath her pajama top, bounced heavily with each jarring descent.
“Is this it?” she gasped, tears welling in her eyes again, born of overwhelming physical sensation and a grief so deep it had no bottom. “Is this what you wanted? To see me like this? To break me?”
“No,” he growled, his own control fraying. He thrust upward, meeting her downward plunge with a powerful drive of his own. The impact shuddered through her. “I never wanted to break you. I wanted to worship this.” One hand left her hip, gripped the hem of her pajama top, and yanked it up, exposing her breasts. He palmed one, his thumb scraping over her nipple. “I wanted to see you come apart because it felt good, not because you were fucking dying inside.”
“I am dying inside!” she sobbed, the tears breaking free, streaming down her face as she continued to grind herself onto him. “And this is the only thing that makes it stop! So fuck me! Fuck me like you mean it! Fuck me like it’s the last thing you’ll ever do!”
That was all he needed. A dam broke. His casual charm evaporated, replaced by a raw, primal intensity. He wrapped his arms around her, rolled, and pinned her beneath him on the bed. He hooked her legs over his shoulders, bending her nearly double, opening her to him obscenely. The new angle was deeper, more invasive. He looked down at where they were joined, watching himself disappear into her, his expression one of rapt, hungry awe.
Then he began to fuck her in earnest.
It was a relentless, pounding rhythm. No gentle build, no teasing. This was claiming. Each thrust was a full-body impact, driving the breath from her lungs, shaking the bed frame, making the headboard drum a violent, irregular tattoo against the wall. The sounds he made were guttural, animal—low grunts and curses swallowed by the cacophony of slapping skin and creaking wood.
“Take it,” he commanded, his voice raw. “Take all of it. You wanted this. You asked for it. So take every fucking inch.”
She was beyond words. She was a vessel for sensation. The burning stretch, the shocking depth, the brutal, rhythmic fullness that battered the ache in her heart into temporary submission. Her cries were continuous, a sobbing litany of “yes” and “please” and “more” that she didn’t recognize as her own voice. One of his hands gripped her thigh, holding her open, the other braced beside her head. His eyes were locked on hers, and in them, she didn’t see pity or manipulation. She saw a mirror of her own chaotic fire, a shared understanding of this dark, transactional catharsis.
The coil of pleasure, wound impossibly tight by anger and grief, snapped. Her orgasm ripped through her with a violence that dwarfed their first encounter. It was a convulsive, white-hot detonation that had her screaming, her back bowing off the bed, her inner muscles clamping around him in a series of frantic, milking spasms. The world dissolved into pure, screaming sensation.
It triggered his own release. With a final, deep, grinding thrust that buried him to the hilt, he roared, a sound of pure, unvarnished release. She felt the hot pulse of him through the condom, the rhythmic throbbing of his impossibly thick length as he emptied himself. He collapsed forward, catching his weight on his forearms, his forehead pressed against her sweat-slicked shoulder, his entire body shuddering.
For a long time, there was only the sound of their ragged, overlapping breaths, and the distant hum of the city through the cracked window. The smell of sex was overpowering, musky and sharp, burying the last traces of lavender.
Slowly, sensation returned to her limbs. The heavy, spent weight of him. The deep, throbbing ache between her legs—a satisfying, claimed sort of pain. The cool air on her damp skin.
He stirred first, pressing a soft, unexpected kiss to her shoulder before rolling off her. He disposed of the condom, tying it off and dropping it into the same wastebasket. A ritual established. He lay on his back beside her, one arm flung over his eyes.
She didn’t move. She stared at the ceiling, tears still leaking silently from the corners of her eyes, tracking into her hairline. The frantic emptiness was gone, replaced by a hollow, quiet exhaustion. He hadn’t fixed anything. He’d just made her forget for a little while. And now the remembering was beginning again, seeping back in at the edges.
“I brought wine,” he said finally, his voice hoarse. “And shitty chocolate. In the bag by the door.”
A weak, watery laugh bubbled out of her. It sounded broken. “Why?”
“Because you sounded like you needed it. And because this…” He gestured vaguely between them, at the wreckage of the bed. “…isn’t just about that for me. Not anymore.”
She turned her head to look at him. He’d moved his arm and was watching her, his expression unreadably complex. “What is it about, then?”
“You.” The simplicity of the word was devastating. “The fucking tragedy of you. The strength of you, even now. Especially now. Most people would have left. You’re choosing to burn it down from the inside instead. I can’t decide if it’s the bravest or the stupidest thing I’ve ever seen.”
“It’s both,” she whispered.
“Yeah.” He sat up, swung his legs over the side of the bed. “I’m gonna get the wine. You should put some clothes on. Or don’t. But let’s at least pretend this is slightly civilized.”
He stood, pulling his jeans and boxers back up, leaving them unfastened. He walked out of the bedroom, naked from the waist up. She heard the rustle of the paper bag, the clink of a bottle.
She slowly sat up. Every muscle protested. She felt profoundly used, and in that usage, there was a strange, perverse purity. She pulled her pajama pants and panties back up, tugged her top down over her breasts. She didn’t bother with the drawstring. She just let them hang loose.
He returned with two water glasses half-full of red wine and a bar of chocolate. He handed her a glass and set the chocolate on the nightstand. He sat beside her, not touching, and took a long drink.
She sipped hers. It was cheap and fruity, but it was something to do. The silence was different now. Post-climax. Thick with unspoken questions.
“What happens now?” he asked, staring into his glass.
“Now?” She took another sip. “Now, I guess you go home. And I wait for Tim to come back. And tomorrow, we all go to work. And maybe next week, or the week after, I text you again.”
He was quiet for a moment. “And him? What does he do while you’re with me?”
“He watches his porn.” She said it flatly, the poison now a clinical fact. “That’s the deal. He gets his fantasy. I get mine.”
Marcus winced, as if the crudeness of the arrangement physically pained him. “That’s no way to live, Krissy.”
“It’s the way we’ve chosen.” She looked at him, her eyes clear now, and utterly desolate. “You’re a part of that choice. You don’t get to judge it.”
“I’m not judging.” He set his glass down and turned to face her. “I’m worried. About you. This is a poison pill. You’re swallowing it to punish him, but you’re the one who’s gonna feel it eat through you.”
“It already has,” she said. There was no self-pity in it. It was just truth.
He reached out then, his hand cupping her cheek, his thumb wiping away a stray tear. The tenderness of the gesture, so at odds with the animal ferocity of minutes before, made her want to shatter all over again. “Then let me be something else. Not just the other side of his sick equation. Let me take you out. For coffee. For a walk. Let me talk to you without being inside you.”
She leaned into his touch, a moth to a flame. “Why?”
“Because I like you. I liked you in the bar before I knew any of this fucked-up story. I like your quietness. I like the way you think. The sex… Christ, the sex is otherworldly. It’s the best I’ve ever had. But it’s not all there is. And if this is going to be… a thing… I don’t want it to only be this.” He gestured at the bed.
She was trembling. The offer was a door to a different world, one that wasn’t defined by betrayal and counter-betrayal. It was terrifying. “Tim…”
“Fuck Tim,” Marcus said, with a quiet vehemence. “This part isn’t about him. This is about you and me. Whatever this is. He has his side of the street. This is ours.”
She didn’t have an answer. The concept was too vast, too destabilizing. She just nodded, a tiny, almost imperceptible movement.
He took that as enough. He finished his wine, stood, and finished dressing properly, buckling his belt with a soft jingle. He looked down at her, sitting small and rumpled on the edge of the destroyed bed. “I’ll go. You should sleep.”