Chapter 21 Lucy
LUCY
It took many years to reconcile the abject need I have for feeling used and abused, with how society tells me I should behave as a woman.
Be polite, but not too polite. Be quiet, but not too quiet. Be engaging, but not too engaging. Be good in bed, but not too good. Be every man’s desire, but not every man’s because that would make me a slut.
And yet…
I love the idea of being someone’s slut.
If I was their only slut.
If I was precious and loved and adored for being desperate for their cock.
If they were the ones calling me names to claim me.
And the sound of those words rolling off Zach’s tongue again makes me feel more than I should.
Everything in me is silent, yet exploding. Contradictory. Like fireworks with the sound turned off. Something I can feel but can’t hear.
“Clean up your mess,” Zach says, shoving his thick fingers into my mouth. They taste of me, and I stroke my tongue between his fingers, savoring every lick.
His eyes are focused on my tongue while I focus on him. His breath is coming a little faster, his mouth open. Arousal is etched into every feature.
And this is what I missed with Henry, and every other man I’ve been with since.
I had sex with them.
They had sex with me.
But we weren’t so desperately into each other, it would take a crowbar to separate us. We didn’t need each other so badly, it was as if we’d die if we parted.
And they weren’t prepared to demean me to give me what I needed, which I know is probably written somewhere on a meme about green flags.
Or they’d try and get it all wrong. They’d infantilize, tell me off like a child.
One man even told me that what I was asking for was side-piece, not wife, behavior.
Like a woman doesn’t know her own mind well enough to choose how she wants to role-play.
But I’ve missed someone willing to touch me and talk to me the way Zach does.
Like he can read my mind and body. Like he needs to say it as much as I need to hear it.
Like he needs to do it as much as I need him to.
He pulls his fingers out and crawls up my body, placing his knees on either side of my ribs, then grabs my head with both hands, taking the weight of my skull. “Suck it, Bug. Welcome him home.”
I struggle to get the tip of his cock into my mouth. My arms are trapped, and he’s holding my skull with both his hands. But, finally, I manage to latch on to his head and suck hard.
“Fuck, yeah,” he says, then grunts in pleasure.
The position is awkward. Painful. Perfect.
He rocks his hips back and forth, and I have no say how close to the back of my throat he goes. There is no risk of deep throat due to the angle of my head, but where he does reach almost causes me to gag.
“Bite me and I suck on those nipples of yours again so hard, they’ll bruise for days,” he warns.
Wetness pools between my thighs at the threat.
But I focus on the task at hand. I run my tongue along the thick vein on the underside as he withdraws, then relax when he pushes his way back in. He smells of a musk distinctly his own, and I feel the sharp bite of tears, for a moment, as I think about just how much I’ve missed him.
I close my eyes to hide them from him, but a single tear escapes and rolls down the side of my temple.
Immediately, Zach pulls out of me, wiggles down the bed, and presses his lips to my ear. “Cry for us both,” he says, before running his tongue along the tear track. “You need me to stop?”
The question is uncharacteristic. Zach always put his faith in our safe word and gestures. They were the only things that would stop him.
The kindness almost breaks my mood.
But it’s a reminder that maybe we don’t know each other as well as we used to anymore.
I shake my head.
“So desperate for my cock that you won’t let tears get in your way, huh?” he asks.
I open my eyes and look up at him. The world boils down to this single moment. “I’m yours to use as you please.”
Everything between us stills. I swear, if I looked closely enough, I’d see the dust motes moving glacially as the cosmos freezes us in place.
The only movement is the stroke of Zach’s thumb along my temple.
Certainty is a strange word. A firm conviction that something is true. I dance around the word within the law. But here, in Zach’s bed, I’m certain that the universe conspired to make the two of us for each other.
It couldn’t be possible that someone else aligns with me so completely, like he does. Someone who wants me to be his as badly as I want him to be mine.
I had him once.
Was married to this man.
We had our forever, and I blew it.
I let a weak man, my father, control how I showed up in the world. I hunkered down, made myself small, and cut off everyone important to me. Zach, his family, the club, my mom. And for what? To end up alone.
Then, I remember my reasons. It meant Zach had to give up only four years of his life instead of sixteen.
He would have willingly served sixteen if it meant he got to keep you.
Only age has given me this perspective.
And when his lips meet mine so firmly that my head is pushed down into the pillow, I know it to be true. There can’t be this much still between us, otherwise.
He lifts off the bed and goes to his jeans to grab a condom from his wallet, then dips into the bathroom to retrieve an unopened bottle of lube.
A man like him, I would have assumed there was a large supply of sex toys and lube and condoms right near the bed.
But the move is endearing, like he wasn’t prepared for this, for us.
Like I wasn’t a sure thing.
With fierce concentration, he pulls the condom on his thick and hard cock, then takes a deep breath as he tips some lube onto his fingers and coats himself.
I wish I knew what all the deep breaths and sighs are for.
Nostalgia?
Courage?
Patience?
Need over anger?
When he climbs onto the bed, he looms over me. “Open to me.”
I remember what that meant. He wants me spread open wide. Vulnerable to him.
I raise my feet to his shoulders, then he moves over me, first sliding one, and then a second, lubricated finger inside me. I arch my back at the intense intrusion.
But his hungry gaze never leaves mine.
His shoulders and arms help my legs back until my knees are up by my armpits and my pussy is fully exposed to him.
He watches between us as he grips his cock and nudges me with his head, until he finds the entrance.
I have no control in the position. I can’t control the speed or depth.
“Zach,” I cry out when he thrusts into me.
“Luce,” he barks at the same time, the muscles in his neck corded as he throws his head back.
Every inch of him is straining against the sensations.
He grunts as he starts to move his hips. “Taking all of me like the slut you are. You know, every other woman I’ve ever slept with needed some preparation. Needed time to adjust. But you and your slit just take it, time after fucking time.”
The last four words are said on hard, punctuated thrusts.
I don’t know what switch in me is broken, but the fact I’m the only woman he can do this with fills me up like he just told me I’m beautiful.
He looks between us, watching the way his cock is pounding into me. The sensation of my clit getting hammered sends my body spiraling back to the edge of another orgasm.
I raise my hands to his face, a tender gesture in contrast to the rage of his hips.
He takes his weight on one hand and places his other hand around my neck. “One day, I’m gonna squeeze this neck of yours so tightly while you’re sucking my cock, I’ll feel it moving in your throat. Fuck your mouth as you choke around it.” He takes a deep breath. “Yeah. Gonna fucking love it.”
“I meant what I said.” I place my hand over the top of his, squeezing, forcing his fingers to tighten around my throat. “I really am yours to use.”
But his strokes begin to shorten. “This could have been us,” he says, as little stars spin in my peripheral vision. “All this fucking time, this could have been us, Bug.”
He lets go of my throat, kissing me furiously, and I’m scared I’m going to miss a second orgasm.
I’m scared he’s never going to put his hands around my throat ever again.
I’m scared I’m not his slut. That he won’t listen when I try to explain.
And I’m haunted by his words.
This could have been us.
Tears sting my eyes again, but this time, they’re met with the crash of a sudden and harsh second orgasm that takes my breath away.
“Fuck, that feels…ugh!”
Unable to grapple with the colliding emotions, the tears escape. And this time, he doesn’t lick them clean. This time, he lets them fall as he chases his own orgasm.
His eyes closed, he rides me fast, but his hands cup my cheeks as though this is special and tender.
I wrap my hands around him, squeezing him tightly.
Wishing this were forever.
“Ah, fuck,” he says. “I’m gonna…come. Shit! Luce.”
His hips lose all rhythm, and I feel his cock pulse deep inside me, filling me up.