36. Claire
I don’t remember falling asleep. I don’t remember anything after feeling like my soul had been ripped out of my body, taking all of the hurt, the chaos, the pain with it. I only remember a moment of bliss following that, and then I wake suddenly.
I’m not sure, at first, what pulled me out of a sleep like death.
The room is lit only by a lamp in the corner, which casts a gentle glow through the darkness. I know where I am—I know this is Remy’s room, and I know that I’m alone. And then I hear it—the rattling of a doorknob that’s locked. I bolt upright and glance at the door, my heart pounding furiously in my chest. Something about waking up to someone trying to come into this room, where I’m naked beneath a sheet, sends immediate alarm bells going off in my head.
Do I stay quiet? Do I ask who is on the other side?
I glance around the room, looking for anything I can use in defense if it comes down to it. I’m just reaching for a heavy book on Remy’s nightstand when the doorknob shakes one last time, and then I hear the sound of footsteps retreating.
Relief washes over me, and I put it down to a drunk guest looking for the bathroom.
As if reminded by that thought, my bladder twists in need, so I gather the sheet around myself and make my way to Remy’s bathroom without turning on the light. I don’t know if I should feel dirty considering he fucked me thoroughly and then ran out, but I suppose it’s better than kicking me out. Besides, I can’t bring myself to feel shameful or wrong when I feel this damn good. I don’t know how long I’ve been asleep for, but it had to have been hours because I feel recharged in spite of my physical exhaustion… I don’t know the last time I’ve felt this way.
I doubt Remy is afraid of the dark—I doubt he’s afraid of anything really—but he has a single nightlight plugged into the wall by the counter. I’m grateful for its light to drive out the darkness as my eyes are still adjusting, and it illuminates everything enough that I find the toilet without incident. I silently applaud him on shutting the lid—half the men I’ve lived with never managed to grasp the concept.
Its not until I wrap the sheet around myself again and go to wash my hands that I reach for the light switch. When I do, the sense of peace that had blanketed me before disappears entirely as a figure appears behind me. I spin around so fast I nearly slam my head into the door frame. My scream is hoarse, fading out in the middle, and I think my heart’s about to jump ship. Thank God I just peed, or I’d be soaking Remy’s sheet right now, and not in the good way.
“I didn’t mean to startle you.” Remy says, though he’s grinning a bit despite his claim. He’s all dressed in his suit again, though the tie has been loosened and his jacket is draped across his arm. While I think he’s telling the truth about not meaning to scare me, I think he’s certainly enjoying seeing me flustered.
“Well, you did.” I snap, letting out a shaky breath. My voice is gravelly, so I clear my throat and cross my arms over the front of the sheet.
“Did you think I was a ghost?” He teases, stepping closer so that my back presses against the counter. His eyes are playful, but I can see the heat in them as he assesses me, and it ignites the heat in me.
“I thought you were a demon from the mirror dimension.” I tell him, and then wince when I realize how weird that probably sounded. My brain feels scrambled, like it can’t latch onto anything that would make sense right now. The way he’s looking at me certainly doesn’t help.
“The mirror dimensions?” He muses, stepping directly in front of me now, so that I couldn’t go anywhere if I tried. All I manage is a small response to that, some noncommittal noise like a hum. My heart is still beating fast, but this time it’s not with fear… it’s working overtime to send blood to my extremities. I can feel it rushing to the apex between my thighs, desire spreading out from my core and spilling like liquid warmth in my stomach. “I’m interested in this mirror dimension.” He murmurs, lifting my chin in his fingers so that his eyes can lock on mine. “I’d love to fuck you in it so that I could watch you come apart from every angle.”
I suck in a breath and promptly end up choking on it.
All of my bravado from earlier, my brazenness, my seductress persona, is gone. Earlier I felt like I was in control, if only a little. But right now, with him looking at me like he wants to absolutely devour me, I don’t have the slightest illusion of it. The corners of his lips tip upward once I’ve gotten a handle on myself. “It seems you’d like that too.” He croons, swiping his thumb slowly across my bottom lip, parting it from the top.
I’m rendered speechless. Even if my brain could grasp onto a coherent thought right now, I wouldn’t be able to make my vocal cords work or convince my tongue to move. I simply stare at him, sure that there’s not enough air in this bathroom to breathe when the sight of him steals the oxygen from my veins.
Realizing he’s not getting an answer from me, he tries again, swiping my hair behind my ear so that he can press his mouth gently against it. “Would you like that, Claire? To watch me fuck you from every angle?”
I’ve never been so close to the edge from words alone, but I feel myself clenching around nothing, desperate and needy. My legs go shaky, and I’m grateful for the support of the counter behind me. “Yes.” I manage. It’s part moan and part whimper, all I can squeak out around the need that’s suffocating me.
Every cell in my body is screaming for this man, aching for the sweet pleasure that I know he can give me. Disappointment floods me like a cool wave when he steps away from me, smirking. It’s short-lived, because in one swift movement, he tugs the sheet away from where I’ve knotted it at the chest, leaving me exposed. If I wasn’t already giving myself away, my nipples certainly would—they’ve already been coaxed into points by my desire, but they harden under his gaze and the cool air.
Remy throws his jacket through the open door, where it lands somewhere on his bedroom floor, but I’m more focused on the way he stares at me as he pulls his tie off from around his neck. “Let’s call it your lucky day.” He says, flinging the tie at the counter. It lands in the sink on the far side. “You see, I remodeled this place after the original house. And one thing that I kept—one thing that made no sense—is the closet doors.” He tips his head behind him but doesn’t break stride in unbuttoning his shirt and I’m too eager for him to lose it to tear my eyes away and look at whatever he was indicating. “My father hated them. He called it tacky, but I remember how my mother would pull these doors out. She was obsessed with looking perfect, of course, so she’d angle them just right to be sure that there were no flaws in her appearance. God forbid a stray hair put a crack in the fa?ade my parents so painstakingly crafted.” He shrugs out of his shirt and lets it drop to the floor without ceremony.
I still haven’t quite figured out what he’s talking about—it’s hard to focus when I’m too busy thinking about those thick arms wrapping around me again, his hands on my throat. But when he turns, I finally tear my eyes away from him to see what he means.
I didn’t notice them before since I walked by them in relative darkness. The closet is past the toilet and shower, occupying most of the far wall, and the doors are made of frameless panes of glass, floor-to-damn-near-ceiling. In one of the homes I stayed in when I was younger, the closet I shared with another foster kid had the same sort of mirrors. In the dead of night when I’d wake to the reflection of passing high beams, that mirror always scared the shit out of me. But as Remy walks toward the closet now, his pants low on his hips and the perfect musculature of his back on full display in the mirror behind him, I am only intrigued.
He reaches a hand up and pops the first door open, leaving the bifold angled so that it throws my reflection back at me. I can also see the reflection of the back of my head, my hair falling in wild waves down my bare back. It’s a weird sensation, to simultaneously see myself in multiple angles. When he props the other door open at the same angle, it tosses that reflection back at the other. Remy grins as he crosses back to me and, in one swift movement, scoops me up with his hands under my ass and sets me on the counter, immediately fitting himself between my legs.
I feel exposed in an entirely new way as he unthreads his belt and slips out of his boxers. He’s tall enough that even with me propped up between the sinks, the cold marble beneath my ass, his hips align perfectly with me. His cock is already hard, and as he pushes my knees further apart, it doesn’t escape me that he can probably see just how wet I am too, how much I want him to take me right here and now.
But he doesn’t fist himself or step closer—he hooks his arms under my knees and drags me closer to the edge of the counter, so close that I worry for a second that I’ll slip right off. I throw my hands out to catch the surface, just in case, but I should know better. He doesn’t let me fall—he hooks my legs over his shoulders, opening me more for him. The last thing I see before he dives into tonguing my pussy is a smirk, and it lives there a moment as I squeeze my eyes shut, overcome by the sudden sensation of his tongue laving at me. With one long stroke, from damn-near my ass all the way up to my clit, he turns me into a desperate mess. My moan is unhinged and uninhibited as I try to maintain control and refrain from pushing into him.
I tangle my fingers in his hair, raking them against his scalp, and throw my head back as his breath whispers over me, full of anticipation. “Remy,” I moan, too impatient. He’s just lit a match and then stepped back instead of tending the flame, and I can’t tame the need in me.
“Open your eyes,” he says, his fingers flexing on my thighs.
I do as he says, blinking away the blurry fog from squeezing them shut so tightly. He looks every bit the god I’ve always seen him as, his chin tilted up at me, his eyes smoldering like the reflection of fire I see in the colors. I can see a small reflection of myself—so desperate, and not the least bit ashamed by it.
“If you want me to fuck you,” he swipes a finger over my slit, collecting my wetness on two of his fingers, and then back down, sliding along the place where I want him with a teasing touch. It’s not enough friction, not in the right place, but it’s enough to leave me feeling weak. With every downward stroke, I feel myself growing wetter. If I moved right now, I don’t doubt that I’d have left a spot on the counter, but I can’t bring myself to care. It feels too fucking good. “With my tongue or otherwise, I’m going to need you to watch yourself. I want you to see just how devastating you look when you shatter on my tongue. And if you do a good job of that, then I’ll let you see how you come on my cock. Hmm?”
Fuck. I want him every way I can take him, but right now I’m desperate to slip onto his cock and have him fill me. I grip his hair tighter, my fingers tangling near his scalp as I try to restrain myself, and nod. When he doesn’t look away, I realize he’s waiting for me to agree, so I nod, earning a crooked grin. “Good. Grip the counter.”
I barely have time to realize what he’s saying before I’m doing it. It’s like my body is trained to act on his command.
Ceasing his petting, he lifts his fingers to my lips, painting them with my own wetness, slow and sensual. Before I can even contemplate how I should react to that, he turns his attention back to my core and I turn my attention to the mirrors on the wall.
It’s unspeakably hot, not just because I can see him between my legs from a half dozen different angles, but because I can see the back of his head as it dips between my legs and his tongue lashes out at my clit without any preamble.
It’s not going to be long before I do exactly what he wants me to. I could probably shatter right now if he really wanted me to, but I’m holding out because I don’t want it to be over yet.
This is heaven—I’m convinced. All of my earlier fears about burning in hell for what we did are gone without a trace, because there’s no world in which you could fear hell when you’ve experienced this. It’s more than a fair enough trade. I’d sell my soul—or what’s left of it—to live in this moment for eternity.
The fingers that he just dragged over my lips sink into me without warning. It’s not a conscious decision for me to clench around him like I’m desperate to keep him there. His tongue doesn’t even cease its work as he pulls my clit into his mouth entirely, eliciting a scream from me when he sucks it gently. I squeeze my eyes shut at the sudden explosion of pleasure, and then promptly open them again to find my reflection.
“God,” I moan. Right now, this bathroom is my church—a place to worship and be worshipped in turn.
I take my bottom lip between my teeth, trying desperately to maintain control. But the earlier taste of myself on my tongue—light and faintly sweet—just adds more to the fire in me, which is raging as it spreads lower and lower.
When he curves his fingers upward, hitting a spot deep inside me, the fire turns into an explosion that rocks my entire body. White-hot heat spills out from my pores, obliterating me entirely. But unlike every other time I’ve felt myself being shredded apart at the molecular level, I don’t close my eyes. I fix my gaze on the mirrors, on the different versions of myself, and watch as I come.
I’ve never had an esteemed view of myself. I don’t hate the way I look or who I am most of the time, but I’ve also never loved the way I look or who I am. I’ve always fallen firmly in the middle, feeling some days like a flaw in nature’s design and other days feeling like I belong exactly as I am.
But in this moment, I am my own god. In this moment, I am the sea and the sky, the moon, and the stars. I am everything that is right and good in the world, and I’m the reason it all exists. I don’t know if his goal was to make me feel like I’ve created universes and life, but it does. Because in this moment, I feel like this release is the only thing in the world that matters.
It’s so consuming that I don’t immediately notice that he’s drinking my release until I see his throat bob, my juices flowing out from around his lips as the pressure returns low in my stomach, an immediate need for a second release building. His tongue swipes the underside of my clit with his sucking.
A second orgasm right now would surely kill me, and yet I can’t get the words to tell him to stop. I don’t want him to, even though it’s starting to be too much, the sensitivity reaching the point of hysteria. I cry out, trying to pull away from him before a second explosion shatters me too well to ever put the pieces back together.
Remy seems to take the hint, letting go of me and sucking in a breath like he’s deprived himself of air for the pleasure of taking every last drop I had to give. My arms fall to my sides, exhausted from holding so tight to the edge of the counter as he stretches back to his full height, boxing me in between his thick arms as he braces his hands on the counter. I focus on the thick cords of muscle wrapping around his forearms for a minute, trying to catch my breath before he can lock eyes with me and steal it all over again.
He does steal it, though not in the way I expect. When he grips my chin, it’s to jerk it upward, forcing my head to tilt back. His eyes still smolder, though this time he’s the one looking down at me. And though I felt oddly indestructible when I was being torn asunder just seconds ago, the way he looks at me feels like a wrecking ball to the chest.
And that’s got nothing on the way he kisses me, hard and furious, crushing his mouth against mine so forcefully I think it may bruise… not that I care.
He could steal my soul out of my own body right now and I wouldn’t care, because I’ve already given it to him.
I’m so fucked.