Eventually, I speak.
“You know what’s fucked up?” My voice is raw, nothing like the one I use in boardrooms or investor calls.
She makes a lazy humming noise, not opening her eyes.
“I thought you’d be a fun story. A distraction. But this? This is going to ruin me.”
The young woman smiles, still not looking at me. “Isn’t that the point?”
I run a finger along her jaw, turning her face up to mine. “You’re mine, now,” I say, and I mean it. “You belong to me.”
She looks at me, eyes open, impossibly innocent. “I want to be owned by you, Thomas.”
Something in my chest tightens. I grab her, hard, rolling her under me, pressing her into the mattress until she’s gasping.
I kiss her, softer than before, letting my mouth linger on hers until she melts beneath me. I pull back, memorizing her ruined face, her swollen lips, the look of utter trust in her eyes.
“I’ll take care of you,” I say. “Forever, if you let me.”
She doesn’t reply. She just clings to me, arms around my neck, breasts crushed to my chest. Her breath slows, then steadies, and in less than a minute she’s asleep.
I don’t sleep.
I watch her, every minute, counting the freckles on her shoulder, the faint bruise on her thigh from where I gripped her too hard. I see her purse on the nightstand, flap askew. I see our discarded clothes on the floor, lying in tangled heaps. None of it matters.
What matters is the girl in my arms.
And the slow, molten sweetness that fills me, melting down everything I thought I was, making room for something new.
I press my lips to her hair and close my eyes, and for the first time in a decade, I feel like I’ve won something worth keeping.
11
THE MORNING AFTER INCLUDES A DELICIOUS BACKDOOR FINGERING
Andie
The first thing I feel is the cold: a thin, fresh chill against my naked shoulder. The second is the absence. I open my eyes to a cathedral of glass and pale, midwestern sky, the endless sheet of city stretching out beyond the penthouse window, and Thomas’s body not next to mine. Just my own arms curled around a dent in the pillow, and the silver silk sheet twisted in a noose around my legs.
For a minute, I don’t move. I just float there, the quiet hugeness of the space pressing in. Light comes in from everywhere: watery, gold, insistent. It’s too early for the sun to be so strong, but up here it doesn’t have to fight for its life, doesn’t have to crawl through the trees and telephone wires of the world below.
I shift to sit up, and immediately a sharp, electric ache wakes up between my legs. It’s not bad, just there: a wrecked pussy, stretched and hollow and sore in a way that feels almost holy. I flex my thighs, roll my hips in a little test, and wince—god, I’m going to remember this for a week. I tilt my chin and look,almost on a dare. There’s a thin, rusty smear on my right inner thigh, the same shade as the silk, dried to a tiny crescent.
I touch it, two fingers, then press them together, feeling the tacky bloom of it. I want to be embarrassed, or ashamed, but all I feel is a weird pride: like proof that last night was real, that I didn’t dream it. I lean back on my elbows and stare at the ceiling. My heart does a weird little skip, and I catch myself smiling, teeth buried in the softness of my lip.
A sound breaks the moment: the faint, frantic sizzle of a pan, and above it, a man’s low, off-key humming. I freeze, then relax. It’s just Thomas. Not gone. Just outside.
He’s cooking breakfast, I realize. I picture him at the stove in his high-rise, shirtless, the scar on his shoulder a dull bar of copper in the morning light, flipping something in a pan while half his brain runs a hostile takeover somewhere. The image is so domestic it makes me want to laugh, or maybe cry, or maybe just stay here under the covers forever.
Instead, I move. I wriggle my legs free of the sheet, and the cold hits me everywhere at once, pebbling my skin and making my nipples tight as thumbtacks. I scan the floor for my clothes but see only his white dress shirt, crumpled where he must have tossed it. I snag it and pull it on, sleeves covering my hands. It smells like him: some expensive cologne, and underneath that, just Thomas, the scent of his neck and the salt of his sweat.
I button the shirt up and wrap my arms around myself, holding in the heat. My purse is still on the nightstand, and suddenly, I remember. My heart begins to race as my pulse jumps. Oh shit. I sit back down on the bed with the purse in my hand and dig out my phone. For a second, I just look at the black glass of the screen, seeing my own reflection—eyes puffy, hair insane, mouthswollen and a little raw from his kisses. I look like a woman who’s just had the night of her life.
I thumb the phone awake. There are no missed texts, no SOS from Mary Kate or Kayleigh, no flurry of “where r u” from Simone. I scroll to the camera roll, tap the gallery, and there it is: last night’s video, the file marked only by a time and date, nothing else.
I hesitate, my thumb trembling. I could send it right now. Just drop it in the group chat, three taps, and the prize is mine. The money, the bragging rights, the satisfaction of beating my friends at their own game. It’s what we promised, what we bet on. But the idea makes me weirdly queasy. Like a betrayal somehow, even if this is what we agreed to.
I press play to check out the recording.
