5. Selene
SELENE
I stand in Silas's closet for eleven minutes after Stella's footsteps fade down the stairs, my naked body pressed between his work shirts and his boots, the plug still inside me, my heart hammering a rhythm that feels like morse code for caught, caught, caught.
The closet smells of cedar and sawdust and him, the darkness absolute except for the thin line of light where the door cracked open.
I can hear Silas breathing on the other side, can hear him waiting, can hear the house settling around us like a held breath.
"She's gone," he says finally, his voice low, rough, nothing like the controlled command from moments before.
I push the door open. He stands there, still in his briefs, his cock straining against the cotton, his eyes dark and wild.
He reaches for me but I step back, pressing myself against the closet wall, my hands shaking, my body still throbbing with the interrupted training, the near miss, the terror of my mother's face three feet from where I stood naked and plugged and trembling.
"This is insane," I whisper, my voice cracking. "Silas, she almost saw. She almost walked in and saw me in your closet with that thing inside me. She would have known. She would have seen everything."
"She didn't."
"She could have." I push past him, grab my dress from the floor where he dropped it, pull it over my head with shaking hands.
The fabric sticks to my sweat, clings to my thighs, does nothing to hide what I've become in twenty four hours.
"I can't do this. We can't do this. She's my mother.
She's your father's wife. If she finds out, if anyone finds out, we'll be destroyed.
She'll never forgive me. She'll never look at me the same. She'll?—"
"Selene." He catches my wrist, his fingers wrapping completely around the bones, his thumb pressing into my pulse. "Stop."
I stop. Not because he commanded it, though the command is there, buried in the gravel of his voice. I stop because his hand is shaking too, because his eyes aren't wild anymore, they're something worse, something frightened and fierce and desperate.
"Twenty-four hours," he says, his voice dropping to a whisper.
"Give me twenty-four hours. Let me prove this can work.
Let me prove we can be careful. And if you still want to stop, if you still want to pretend this isn't happening, I'll let you go.
I'll fix your window. I'll board it shut myself.
You'll sleep in your room, in your dry bed, and you'll never hear from me again. Not a touch. Not a look. Not a word."
I stare at him. The offer sounds like freedom. It tastes like death.
"Twenty-four hours," I repeat, my voice barely audible.
"Twenty-four hours," he confirms, releasing my wrist, stepping back, putting three feet of hardwood between us that feels like an ocean.
"Go. Get dressed. Eat breakfast with your mother.
Act normal. I'll do the same. And tonight, if you still want this, come to me.
If you don't, I'll know. I'll hear it in your footsteps, in your breathing through the wall. I'll know, and I'll let you go."
I go.
I walk to my room on legs that feel borrowed, like they belong to someone who hasn't been stretched and plugged and nearly caught.
I shower until the water runs cold, scrubbing his scent from my skin, trying to erase the memory of his hands, the phantom pressure of the plug that still pulses inside me even after I've removed it.
I dress in jeans and a loose sweater, clothes that hide everything, that armor me in cotton and denim.
Breakfast is pancakes and my mother's chatter, Richard's newspaper, and Silas's absence.
He's already gone, his father explaining that the Southampton project needs him, fourteen hour days, don't expect him for dinner.
Stella nods, proud of her stepson. I nod too, relieved and terrified all at once—relieved I don't have to face him, terrified I might never see him again, that the twenty-four hours will stretch into forever, that I'll board my own window shut and spend the rest of my life in that dry room with only my memories and my fingers for company.
I spend the day unpacking my garbage bags, arranging my books on the white oak shelves, hanging my clothes in the closet, pretending to build a life here that doesn't include him.
At 2 PM, I walk to the beach, stand at the waterline, let the Atlantic numb my ankles.
At 6 PM, I eat dinner with Mom and Richard, pasta and wine I don't taste, conversation I don't hear.
At 8 PM, I tell myself I'm not going. The hours stretch ahead of me, endless and empty, and I lie in my bed, staring at the ceiling, my body humming with need, my mind screaming at me to stay.
At 10 PM, I tell myself I'm strong enough to resist. I'm not.
At 11 PM, I touch myself, thinking of him, stopping before I finish because the pleasure feels wrong without his command.
At midnight, I can't breathe. I leave my room and go downstairs to the kitchen, hoping a glass of cold water will help.
I'm standing at the sink, the water running over my hand, when I feel him behind me.
I don't turn around. I know his heat, his weight, the way he fills a room without making a sound.
"You're still awake," he says, his voice low and rough.
I turn. He's leaning against the doorframe, shirtless, wearing only a pair of black boxers that do nothing to hide the thick curve of his cock against his stomach.
He crosses to me, lifts me onto the counter, and steps between my thighs. He doesn't ask. He just waits—his hands on my hips, his forehead pressed to mine, his breath mixing with mine in the dark.
"Twenty-four hours," he says, his voice low and rough. "I told myself I'd wait. I counted every one. Then I heard you in the kitchen and I couldn't stay away."
"I couldn't either," I whisper. "I tried to stay in my room. I really tried."
He stands. He crosses the distance between us in two strides.
He lifts me, carries me to the kitchen, sets me on the counter beside the refrigerator.
The stainless steel is cold against my thighs.
The room smells of lemon cleaner and earlier's bourbon and the particular musk of him that makes my mouth dry.
"Tell me to stop," he says, his hands finding my waist, his thumbs pressing into the bruises he left yesterday. "Tell me to stop and I will. I'll carry you back to your room. I'll fix your window. I'll never touch you again."
I wrap my legs around his waist. I pull him closer. I don't speak.
He enters me with one slow thrust, not the head this time, not just pressure.
He pushes deeper than before, stretching me around him, filling me with a burn that makes my vision blur.
I'm tight, so tight, my body fighting him even as my hips pull him closer.
He gets halfway inside me, ten inches and I've taken five, maybe six, and I seize up.
The pain is immediate, sharp, splitting.
I cry out, my nails raking down his back, drawing blood, my body arching away from him even as my legs lock around his waist, keeping him inside me.
He freezes. Every muscle in his body goes rigid.
His cock pulses inside me, thick and alive and throbbing with his heartbeat, but he doesn't move.
He doesn't thrust. He holds himself still, buried halfway in my body, his breath coming in ragged gasps against my throat.
"Don't move," he grits out, his voice barely human, gravel and German and desperation. "Don't. Fucking. Move."
I breathe through it. In through my nose, out through my mouth, the way he taught me to take the plugs, to accept the stretch, to open for him. The burn subsides to a dull ache, the ache to a fullness that borders on pleasure, the pleasure to a need so sharp it makes my teeth ache.
He kisses me. His mouth finds mine in the dark, his tongue sliding between my lips, his taste filling me—bourbon and sawdust and the salt of his sweat. He whispers praise into my mouth, against my jaw, into the hollow of my throat where my pulse races.
"You're taking me so well, my perfect little thing, so small and tight around me, made for me, only for me."
I whimper, my body adjusting around him, the pulsing of his cock inside me becoming a rhythm I can feel in my spine.
He doesn't move. He holds me, supports me, his hands spanning my waist, his forehead pressed to mine, and we breathe together in the dark kitchen, joined halfway, frozen on the edge of something neither of us can name.
Then he pulls out.
The loss is sudden, empty, cruel, and I cry out, my hips chasing him, my body clenching on nothing.
He grips his base and pumps twice, spilling across my stomach in hot, thick stripes that mark my skin, my navel, the lower curve of my breasts, the scent of him—musk and salt and something darker—filling the kitchen around us.
He groans, a broken sound that vibrates through his chest into mine, and keeps pumping until he's empty, until his cock twitches against his palm, until his breathing slows from ragged to something almost calm.
He pulls off his boxers and uses them to clean me, the fabric soft and warm against my skin.
He holds me against his chest, my head tucked under his chin, his hand stroking down my spine, over and over, until my shaking stops.
He tells me we're almost there. He tells me my body is learning, growing, opening.
He tells me tomorrow, maybe, or the day after, I'll take all of him and he'll claim me completely and nothing will ever separate us again.
He carries me back to his bed and wraps himself around me, his cock softening against my hip, his hand resting between my legs, not moving, just claiming.
I sleep for three hours, maybe four, and wake to gray dawn with the certainty that I'm not stopping, that something shifted in the dark, that I would crawl through broken glass to feel him inside me again.