8. One Bed, Two Liars
ONE BED, TWO LIARS
Ethan
The suite is large enough that the arrangement makes sense.
She takes the bedroom. I take the living room. The couch is long and firm, and I tell myself this is fine as I loosen my tie and sit on the edge of it and listen to her close the bedroom door.
Patricia left extra blankets. There's a lamp on the side table. The storm is building outside, the wind picking up.
I check my phone. A text from Harper. Lily asleep at 7:30 p.m. No tears about you being gone. Made me promise pancakes for breakfast.
I save it. Send back: Tell her I owe her pancakes too, when I get home.
I lie down at 10:15 p.m.
At 11 p.m., I'm staring at the ceiling. The couch is fine. The situation is manageable.
The storm hits at midnight.
Wind, rain, the crack of a coastal storm that skips the warning and goes straight to the main event. The lights flicker once, twice, and cut out.
The room goes black.
I sit up.
A thin beam of light appears under the bedroom door. The bedroom door opens, and she's standing there.
“Power's out,” she says.
“I noticed.”
A pause. “My phone is at twelve percent.”
I find my phone, switch on the flashlight, and open the door.
She's standing there in the half-dark in an oversized sleep shirt and bare feet, her hair loose. She looks nothing like she does at the office. She looks like the woman from the bar.
Two candles and a box of matches in the sideboard. I light both. Set them on the coffee table. The living room fills with a low, unsteady glow, and the storm fills everything else.
“I'm not going back in there,” she says. “It's dark and I can hear something hitting the shutters.”
“It's a branch.”
“I know it's a branch. I don't want to sit in there alone.”
She takes the armchair. Pulls her knees up, wraps her arms around them. I sit back down on the couch.
“The CFO is going to open with the liquidity question,” she says.
“It's midnight.”
“I know. I'm thinking through it.”
“Stop working.”
“You stop working.”
She tilts her head against the back of the chair. “What do you do when you're not running a company?”
“Run a company.”
“That's not an answer.”
“It's the honest one.”
She watches me in the candlelight. “There has to be something. Before all of this. Before you were the guy in the suit.”
“I played guitar. In college. Badly.”
“Guitar.” She grins. “You.”
“I said badly.”
“I don't care about the quality. I care that Ethan Mercer once sat in a dorm room and played guitar.” She tucks her knees tighter. “What happened to it?”
“Sold it. Needed money for my first company.”
“You sold your guitar to start a company.”
“It seemed logical at the time.”
“That's the saddest thing I've ever heard.”
“It was a bad guitar.”
She laughs. The real one. The one from Maui that she can't pull back. The candlelight catches her face, and I look away because if I don't, I'm going to do something I can't undo.
The temperature drops around 1 a.m. The storm pulls cold air off the water. She pulls her arms tighter around herself. Thin sleep shirt. She packed for a board meeting, not a coastal November.
I pick up my jacket from the arm of the couch and hold it out.
She takes it. Pulls it around her shoulders without a word.
“Your neck,” I say.
She looks at me.
“You've been rubbing it since we sat down. The chair isn't helping.”
“It's fine.”
“It's not fine. You tilt your head to the left every time you stretch.”
She stares at me. “You notice that?”
“I notice everything about you. That's the problem.”
The candle flickers between us. The storm rattles the windows. She doesn't look away.
“My shoulders are worse,” she says. “Weeks of stress locked in.”
“I can fix that.”
“You're offering me a massage. In a storm. By candlelight.”
“I'm offering to fix your shoulders. The storm and the candles are coincidence.”
“Nothing about this is coincidence, Ethan.”
She's right. I know she's right. I don't care.
“Sit on the floor,” I say. “Back against the couch.”
She watches me for a long moment. Then she moves. Slides out of the armchair and sits on the rug in front of the couch, her back to me. My jacket falls off her shoulders.
I sit behind her on the edge of the couch. My knees on either side of her. I can smell her shampoo. Something warm. Vanilla and coconut.
I put my hands on her shoulders.
She tenses. Then she exhales and the tension drops, and she leans into my hands.
I press my thumbs into the knots along her shoulders. She's wound tight. Weeks of stress locked into the muscle. I work the left side first, where she tilts, pressing deep and slow.
She makes a sound. Low in her throat. Not a word. The sound of pressure releasing.
I move to her neck. My thumbs trace up the tendons, pressing into the base of her skull. Her head drops forward. Her breathing changes.
“That's ...” She trails off.
“I know.”
My hands slide down her spine. The sleep shirt is thin. I can feel every vertebra, the warmth of her skin through the fabric. I press along the muscles on either side of her spine, and she arches into my hands.
“Ethan.”
“Yeah.”
“Your hands are not on my shoulders anymore.”
“I know.”
She doesn't tell me to stop.
I push the sleep shirt off one shoulder. Press my mouth to the bare skin. She inhales sharp. My lips trace across her shoulder blade and my hands slide around to her stomach and she leans back against me.
“We said we wouldn't,” she whispers.
“We said a lot of things.”
She turns her head. Finds my mouth. Kisses me.
It's not like Maui. In Maui she was reckless and fast, and neither of us was thinking. This kiss is slow. Deliberate. She turns her body toward mine and her hands find my face, and she kisses me like she's been deciding whether to do this for weeks, and the answer is yes.
I pull her up onto the couch. She straddles my lap. The candlelight moves across her skin. Her hands push under my shirt, palms flat on my stomach, and the heat of her touch burns through me.
“I want to feel your skin.” She pulls my shirt over my head. Runs her hands down my chest.
I pull her sleep shirt over her head. Nothing underneath. Her tits, bare and perfect in the candlelight. I cup one in my hand and run my thumb across her nipple and watch it harden.
“Your hands,” she breathes. “God, your hands.”
I take her nipple into my mouth. She gasps and grinds down against me and I'm hard beneath her and she can feel it. She reaches between us. Strokes me through my sweatpants. My head drops back against the couch.
“Tell me what you want,” I say.
“You. All of you.” She tugs my waistband down. Frees me. Wraps her hand around me and strokes, slow and firm, her thumb sliding over the head. “I've been thinking about this since Maui.”
“Since Maui?”
“Since the elevator.” She strokes again. “Since you let me push you against the glass.”
I reach between her thighs. She's in cotton underwear, soaked through. I push the fabric aside and slide two fingers inside her and she moans against my mouth.
“You're so wet,” I tell her.
“I've been wet since you put your hands on my shoulders.”
I curl my fingers. She gasps. I find the spot and work it. Slow circles while my thumb presses her clit. She rocks against my hand. Grips my cock. We're touching each other in the candlelight with the storm roaring outside.
“I need you inside me,” she says. “Now.”
She lifts her hips. I pull her underwear down her thighs and she kicks them off. She positions herself over me, grips the base, and sinks down.
The sound she makes is raw. Her eyes close. Her mouth falls open. She takes all of me, inch by inch, and when I'm buried to the hilt she stops and breathes.
“Look at me,” I say.
She opens her eyes. The candlelight in them. The storm behind her.
She starts to move.
Slow at first. Long rolls of her hips that make me grip the couch cushions. She braces her hands on my shoulders and moves on me in the firelight, and I let her set the pace. This is hers. She's choosing this.
“You feel so good inside me,” she whispers. “So deep.”
I grip her hips. Thrust up into her. She cries out and her pace picks up, grinding down onto me, taking me deep on every stroke.
“Faster,” I tell her.
She gives me faster. Her tits bounce with every thrust, and I take one into my mouth and suck, and she moans loud enough that the storm can't cover it.
I need to touch her. I slide my hand between us and find her clit, swollen and slick. Circle it with my thumb while she moves above me.
“Yes,” she gasps. “Right there. Don't stop.”
I don't stop. She's getting tighter around me with every stroke. Her thighs are shaking. Her breathing is ragged.
“Come for me,” I say.
She breaks. Her head falls back and her pussy clenches around me in pulsing waves and she comes with a cry that fills the room. I feel every contraction. I grip her hips and thrust up into her three more times and follow her over, coming hard, my face buried in her neck.
We stay there. Her on my lap. My arms around her. The candle burning low. The storm beginning to ease.
Her forehead rests against mine.
“That wasn't a massage,” she says.
“No,” I agree. “It wasn't.”
She falls asleep on my chest.
I don't move. The candle burns down. The storm fades to rain. Her hand is curled against my collarbone.
My phone buzzes on the coffee table.
I reach for it without waking her. A text from Harper. Quick check. Lily woke up, asked if you were okay because of the storm. Told her you were fine. Back asleep now.
I type a reply, one-handed. Thank you. Tell her in the morning the storm couldn't hurt Daddy. I'll be home before dinner.
I set the phone face-up on the table. Close my eyes.
I don't hear her get up.
I don't know how much later it is when the bedroom door clicks shut. I open my eyes. She's gone. My jacket is folded on the armchair. The phone is still on the table, screen dark.
But the text is there. And the word Daddy is in it.
I stare at the ceiling.
The storm is over. The silence that follows is worse.