Chapter 3: Brutal Claiming
The city’s morning chorus—the distant groan of garbage trucks, the first sirens—filtered into the loft, but within the tangle of sheets and limbs, time felt suspended. Joanna lay perfectly still, Riley’s forehead warm against her shoulder, the taste of Riley and herself still lingering on her tongue. She watched a dust mote dance in a blade of sunlight cutting across the ceiling. The bruise on her neck throbbed in time with her heartbeat. It felt like an anchor.
Riley was the first to sever the quiet. She shifted, rolling onto her back with a soft grunt, the sheet falling to her waist. Her eyes, now clear and guarded, scanned the high ceiling. “Your agent called,” she said, her voice raspy from sleep and misuse.
Joanna tensed. She’d silenced her phone last night, had forgotten its existence. “How do you know?”
“Checked while you were sleeping. A ‘Marcus’ called three times. Texts, too.” Riley’s tone was flat, observational. A soldier reporting intel.
“He’s persistent.”
“He’s got a job to do.” Riley sat up, the muscles of her back shifting under the dark ink as she reached for her jeans on the floor. She fished out a pack of cigarettes, tapped one out, and lit it with a cheap plastic lighter. The first exhale was a long, blue-gray plume against the sunlight. “You should call him back.”
“I know what he wants,” Joanna said, propping herself on an elbow. The sight of Riley smoking in bed, naked and unselfconscious, was strangely domestic. “He wants to know when I’m coming back. There’s a new studio in Vegas offering stupid money. They want a ‘comeback’ series.”
Riley took another drag, her profile sharp against the light. “You going?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
Joanna studied her. “You know why not.”
Riley turned her head, meeting Joanna’s gaze. Her eyes held a challenge. “Because of this? A couple of fucks in a dirty loft? That’s not a life plan, Joanna.”
The words were meant to push, to test the walls of this fragile thing between them. Joanna felt them land, a dull ache. She didn’t flinch. “It’s not about the sex, Riley. It’s about not wanting to be a ghost anymore. On that set, I was a rented body, a face to cum on. In this bed, right now, I’m just me. Bruised, sticky, real.”
Riley looked away, her jaw working. She stubbed the cigarette out on the concrete floor, a small act of vandalism. “Being real is overrated. It fucking hurts.”
“It does,” Joanna agreed softly. She swung her legs out of bed, her body protesting with a hundred small reminders of the night before. She stood, stretching, unabashedly naked in the streaming light. She caught their reflection in the large, leaning mirror against the far wall—her own tall, curved form, the marks on her skin, and Riley watching her from the bed, a study in conflicted hunger.
Joanna walked to the mirror. She looked at the woman staring back: the famous face, now shadowed with fatigue and something softer. The marks on her neck, her hips. Proof. She traced a fingertip over the bruise on her collarbone.
She heard the rustle of sheets behind her. Riley’s reflection appeared behind hers, a phantom in the glass, still naked, a fresh, hard line of tension in her shoulders. They locked eyes in the mirror.
“You see that?” Riley’s voice was low, coarse. “You look alive.”
“I feel alive.”
Riley stepped closer, her body not quite touching Joanna’s back, but the heat of her was palpable. Her hands came up, rough palms sliding around Joanna’s waist, pulling her back against her front. Joanna’s breath hitched as she felt Riley, already half-hard, press against the small of her back.
“Last night, I held back,” Riley murmured, her lips against Joanna’s shoulder blade. Her voice was all gravel and intent. Her hands slid upwards, cupping Joanna’s breasts, thumbs brushing over her nipples until they peaked. “I was careful.”
“I noticed,” Joanna whispered, leaning into the touch, her head falling back against Riley’s shoulder. Her own cock, responding instantly, thickened against her thigh.
“Don’t want to be careful today.” Riley’s fingers pinched Joanna’s nipples, sharp and sudden, drawing a gasp. One hand drifted down, over her stomach, through the damp thatch of curls, and wrapped around her hardening length. She gave a firm, possessive stroke. “I want to wreck this pretty, perfect image you’re looking at. I want to fuck you until you don’t recognize yourself.”
A violent shiver of pure want rocked through Joanna. She watched, in the mirror, as Riley’s hand worked her cock, watched her own face flush, her lips part. “Do it,” she breathed.
Riley’s eyes, dark and relentless, held hers in the reflection. Then, in one swift, brutal motion, she spun Joanna around and pushed her forward, bending her over the back of the low-slung couch. The cold leather shocked her skin. Riley’s hand pressed between her shoulder blades, keeping her down.
Joanna’s heart hammered against her ribs. She gripped the edges of the couch cushion, her knuckles whitening. She heard Riley spit, a wet, deliberate sound.
Then, Riley’s rough hands were on her ass, spreading her cheeks. The cool air kissed her most intimate place. She felt Riley’s spit, warm and slick, land directly on her tight, untouched hole.
A whimper escaped Joanna’s throat. This was new. This was a frontier. In her old life, it was all about the cock, the performance. This was raw, vulnerable, real.
“You want it raw, baby?” Riley growled, the question a formality. Joanna could feel the blunt, slippery head of Riley’s cock pressing against her, a relentless, heated pressure. She was massive, fully erect, a thickness that promised pain and oblivion.
“Yes,” Joanna choked out, pushing back against her. “Don’t you fucking dare be gentle.”
Riley didn’t wait. There was no gentle push, no slow breach. She slammed forward, one brutal, piston-driven thrust, burying herself to the hilt in a single, tearing movement.
The scream was ripped from Joanna’s lungs, a raw, ragged sound that echoed in the stark loft. It was a white-hot spike of pain that instantly bloomed into a deep, devastating fullness. She saw stars, her vision swimming. The leather squeaked under her clawing fingers.
“Fuck,” Riley groaned above her, her voice strangled with pleasure. “Jesus Christ, you’re tight. Like a fucking vise.”
She didn’t pull out. She held herself there, buried deep, letting Joanna’s body stretch and clench around her. The pain receded, replaced by a shocking, profound sense of being filled, possessed. Joanna gasped for air, her body shuddering.
Then Riley began to move.
It was a hard, punishing rhythm. She pulled almost all the way out, then drove back in with enough force to shove Joanna forward on the couch. The sound was obscene—wet, rhythmic slaps of skin on skin, the creak of the couch frame, their mingled grunts and curses.
“Look,” Riley commanded, her voice thick. “Look in the fucking mirror.”
Joanna forced her eyes open, lifting her head. Their reflection was a brutal, beautiful portrait. Her own face was a mask of ecstatic agony, mouth slack, eyes wide. Riley loomed behind her, a tattooed statue of muscle and sweat, her face a grimace of fierce concentration as she fucked into her, again and again. Joanna watched Riley’s hands, gripping her hips hard enough to bruise, watched her own body jolt with each powerful thrust.
“See that?” Riley panted, her pace relentless. “That’s you. That’s real. Not some fucking script. Just you, getting railed on a broke mechanic’s couch. You feel it?”
“I feel it!” Joanna cried out, her own cock swinging heavy and neglected beneath her. The sensation was overwhelming—the deep, grinding friction inside her, the sheer dominance of Riley’s body claiming hers. It was a violation and a gift all at once. “I feel you… fucking ruining me…”
“That’s right,” Riley snarled, leaning over her, her chest pressing against Joanna’s back. One hand snaked around, finding Joanna’s cock, fisting it in a tight, rough grip. She jerked her in time with her thrusts, a devastating synchronization. “You’re mine right now. Your perfect, famous cock, your gorgeous ass, all mine to fucking use. Come for me. Come while I’m filling you up.”
The command, the crude, filthy reality of it, was the trigger. The coil that had been tightening since she woke snapped. Her orgasm crashed over her with no warning, a tidal wave of pure sensation that tore another scream from her throat. Her release shot over Riley’s fist and onto the leather couch in hot, ragged stripes, her body clamping down viscously around Riley’s pounding cock.
The sensation pushed Riley over the edge. With a final, guttural shout, Riley slammed into her one last time, holding herself deep as she came. Joanna felt the hot, pulsing rush inside her, a claiming more profound than any mark on her skin.
They collapsed together over the back of the couch, a mess of sweat and come and heaving breaths. Riley’s weight was a welcome pressure. For a long minute, the only sounds were their panting and the hum of the city.
Slowly, carefully, Riley pulled out. Joanna winced at the sudden, empty ache, feeling spent and sore and profoundly open. Riley slumped onto the couch, pulling Joanna down with her, until Joanna lay half-across her lap, her face buried in Riley’s neck.
Riley’s hand came up, trembling slightly, and stroked Joanna’s hair. It was a gesture so tender it cracked something open in Joanna’s chest.
“Your agent’s gonna call again,” Riley said quietly, her voice rough.
“I know.”
“You should call him back. Tell him you’re done.”
Joanna lifted her head. “What if he offers a million dollars?”
Riley’s gaze was steady, clear. “Tell him you’re worth more.”
They stayed like that as the sun climbed higher, until the leather grew sticky and the sounds of the city became the sounds of the day. Eventually, Riley shifted. “Shower,” she muttered. “You reek.”
“You reek worse,” Joanna replied, a tired smile touching her lips.
Riley helped her stand. Her legs were unsteady. As they walked naked towards the bathroom, Joanna caught their reflection again in the mirror—two battered, beautiful creatures, marked inside and out.
The ghost was gone. In its place was just a woman, sore and sated, following another woman towards a stream of hot water and an uncertain, unwritten afternoon. For now, it was enough. It was more than enough.