Chapter 7
AFTERMATH
“He’s in a one-bedroom in the suburbs.”
Paulette says it the way someone announces dessert. She’s cross-legged on my kitchen island, wine in hand, her phone face-down—she heard this from Rob’s wife Lisa, who heard it from Rob, who’s apparently still talking to Duane out of some loyalty that won’t survive the settlement.
“Cassandra left him. Moved back to her parents’ in Michigan and her lawyer filed for child support last week.” Paulette takes a drink. “So he’s got your divorce attorney on one side and her family lawyer on the other and no CEO salary to fight either one.”
I pour more wine. The Malbec is good—solid, dark, nothing that’s trying to impress anyone—and my kitchen is warm and mine.
All mine. He conceded the house in week three of the settlement negotiations.
His espresso machine is gone. His mother’s crystal glasses are in a box in the basement.
I drink out of stemless glasses from Target and they’re heavier in my hand and I like the weight.
“The forensic accountant finished,” I say. “Shell accounts, transfers to his brother’s LLC—amateur stuff. My lawyer says the final number is going to be significant enough that even the one-bedroom might be optimistic.”
“To the settlement.” Paulette raises her glass.
“To the settlement.”
We drink. The wine is warm in my chest and Paulette’s feet are on my countertop and the kitchen is quiet in a way that used to scare me.
I used to turn on the TV when Duane traveled, fill the silence with noise, because the house felt too big for one person.
Now the silence is just space. Room to breathe without checking whether my breathing is the right volume for the room I’m in.
“I want a trip.” I set my glass down. “By myself. Somewhere I’ve never been. No itinerary, no resort, no couples’ massage on a deck over the water. I want to walk through a city I don’t know with nobody’s schedule in my head but mine.”
“Where?”
“Lisbon. Tokyo. Somewhere with good food and strangers.”
“You’re going to be so annoyingly happy.” Paulette’s eyes are bright. “You’re going to get a passport stamp and a new haircut and post one cryptic photo on Instagram and every woman who’s ever been screwed over by a man in a Tom Ford suit is going to fall in love with you.”
The laugh that comes out of me is easy. Loose. My ribs don’t hurt when I laugh anymore. My jaw doesn’t ache from holding a smile that isn’t mine.
“Okay.” Paulette puts her glass down and leans forward, both elbows on the marble. “Jacob.”
My stomach pulls. Low, quick, a wire tightening between my hips. I press my glass against my lower lip and the cold steadies me.
“We’re getting a drink tomorrow night.”
“I know. And I need you to hear me when I say this.” Her face is deadly serious, her fingers laced together on the counter. “That man has forearms, Rachelle. He has a jaw. He looked at you like you invented gravity. And you have been celibate for—how long has it been since Duane touched you?”
“I don’t want to calculate that.”
“Long enough that your body has probably forgotten what a good orgasm feels like.”
“It hasn’t forgotten. It’s been handling things independently.”
Paulette’s laugh rips through the kitchen—raw, savage, joyful.
She tips back on the stool and her whole body shakes with it.
“Okay. So tomorrow night. You walk into that bar. You let that man buy you a drink. And when the moment comes—and it will come, because I saw the way you talked about him, the handshake, the thumb on your finger—you do whatever you want. Whatever your body wants. No thinking. No performing.”
“He’s hot. I’m going to fuck him. That’s the whole plan.”
“That’s the best plan you’ve ever had. And your last plan got a CEO fired, so the bar was high.”
She slides off the counter and grabs her bag and pulls me into a hug—hard, tight, the kind where my chin hooks over her shoulder and I can feel her heartbeat against my chest.
“Now go shave your legs.” Her voice is muffled against my shoulder. “Both of them. All the way up.”
“Get out of my house.”
“Call me the second you get home. Or don’t come home. Either way, I want a full report.”
“So there I am, nineteen years old, parked outside this guy’s apartment in a borrowed Civic with a telephoto lens I bought off Craigslist—“
I choke on my bourbon. His knee presses harder against mine under the table and his half-smile deepens, watching me cough.
“Eighty bucks and it smelled like cigarettes. I’m sitting in this car, which is not mine, with this lens, which barely focuses, and the guy’s wife calls me and says is he home?
and I look up and he’s standing at his living room window.
Staring directly at me.” He leans forward, his forearm sliding across the table until his fingers are an inch from mine.
“Eating a sandwich. Just looking at me, eating a sandwich, like yeah, kid, I see you.”
My eyes are watering. The bourbon burns and his fingers brush my knuckles—light, deliberate—and my skin prickles all the way up to my elbow.
The bar is dark around us, candlelight and jazz, and he’s in a dark shirt open at the collar and every time he shifts I catch cedar and clean cotton and something warmer underneath.
“I became a PI because of that.” His thumb traces across my knuckle, slow, and his eyes drop to my mouth and come back up without pretending they didn’t. “I thought—I can do better than a Craigslist lens and a borrowed Civic.”
His forearm flexes when he lifts his glass and I track the movement—the tendon, the vein, the roll of his sleeve against tan skin. His mouth twitches. He sets the glass down and his hand covers mine on the table, warm, deliberate, his thumb pressing into the space between my fingers.
“You’re staring at my arm.” His voice is low, close, and his knee slides against my inner thigh under the table.
“I’m looking at the bar behind you.” My pulse is hammering in my throat and I can feel the heat of his leg through my jeans and my breath is doing something shallow and unsteady that I can’t control.
“You’re staring at my arm and I don’t mind.”
My face is burning. The bourbon is burning.
Everything in this booth is running ten degrees above normal and his thumb drags across my knuckles again and the pressure sends a pulse straight up my inner thigh.
He leans in, closing the distance until his breath is warm on my jaw—cedar, bourbon, the heat of his skin.
“Rachelle. Do you want to come back to my—“
“Yes.”
His mouth is still open around the word he didn’t finish.
His fingers tighten on mine and something shifts in his face—the half-smile burns off and what’s underneath is hungrier, darker, a look that hits me between my hips and makes my breath catch.
He puts cash on the table without counting it, stands, and pulls me out of the booth by the hand.
We’re moving—through the bar, past the tables, his palm hot on the small of my back through the door. Night air hits my flushed skin and his hand slides from my back to my hip and I turn into him on the sidewalk and kiss him.
A sound comes out of him—low, rough—and his arm wraps around my waist and lifts me into him and the kiss goes from testing to filthy in two seconds.
His tongue slides against mine. I bite his lower lip and his grip tightens on my waist hard enough to bruise and a passing car honks and neither of us stops.
“Two blocks.” His mouth is wet against mine, his breath ragged.
“Run.”
We don’t run but we walk fast, his hand laced through mine, and by the time his key hits the lock I’ve already pulled his shirt untucked and my fingers are on the warm skin above his belt. The door opens. Shuts. Dark hallway, his mouth on my neck, my shoulders hitting the wall.
“I’ve been thinking about this since my office.” His teeth graze my collarbone, his hands sliding up my ribs, thumbs brushing the sides of my breasts through my shirt, and my spine arches off the wall. “Since you sat in that chair and looked at me like you were ready to burn down the whole city.”
I grab a fistful of his shirt and pull him harder against me. “I was.”
He pulls my shirt over my head. His mouth is on my collarbone, my sternum, his breath hot on my skin. “It was the hottest thing I’ve ever seen.”
I reach behind my back and unclasp my bra myself, let it drop, and his mouth closes over my nipple—hot, wet, his tongue circling and then his teeth, just enough edge to make my hips jerk forward into his.
My hand fists in his hair and I yank and the groan that vibrates through him hums against my breast.
“Bedroom.”
He lifts me. My legs wrap around his waist and I can feel him hard against me through his jeans and I roll my hips and his step falters, his shoulder hitting the doorframe, his fingers digging into my thighs.
The bed. My back hits the mattress and he’s pulling at my jeans, dragging them down with my underwear in one move.
Cool air on my skin, then his mouth on my inner thigh, moving up, and the shiver turns into something else entirely.
His breath, hot, right where I need him.
His hands spreading my knees apart. I grab the sheets.
His tongue drags over my clit and my hips buck off the bed.
He pins them down—one forearm across my pelvis, holding me still—and works me with his mouth like he’s got nothing else to do for the rest of his life.
Slow, then fast. Flat strokes, then pointed.
His fingers push inside me—two, curling—and my thighs are shaking around his head and the sounds coming out of my mouth aren’t language.
My orgasm slams through me so hard my abs cramp, my back arching, my hand twisted in his hair, and I come gasping and cursing and he rides it out until I’m twitching and pulling at his shoulders.
“Get up here. Now.”
He rises, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand, and the sight of it—his wet mouth, his dark eyes locked on mine—sends another pulse through me so hard my stomach clenches.
I sit up and yank his belt open. Drag the zipper down and wrap my hand around his cock and he hisses through his teeth and his forehead drops to my shoulder, his breath ragged and hot on my skin.
I stroke him—slow, tight—and feel the shudder run through his whole body. My hand. My grip. My pace. I twist on the upstroke and his teeth clamp down on my shoulder and the sound he makes is wrecked.
“Condom.” Barely a word. Air forced through clenched teeth.
“Where?”
“Nightstand.”
I reach for it, tear it open, roll it on him myself—my fingers on him, deliberate, watching his jaw clench, watching the tendons stand out in his neck. I push him onto his back and swing my leg over him and his hands find my hips and his eyes go dark.
I sink down. Slow. Taking him inch by inch, and the stretch makes me gasp and my palms flatten against his chest. His fingers dig into my hips hard enough to leave marks and a muscle jumps in his jaw and I hold there—full, tight, barely breathing.
“Move.” His voice is shaking. “Please. Rachelle. Move.”
I roll my hips. Slow at first—finding the angle, the pressure, grinding down until I feel him hit the spot that makes my breath disappear.
Then faster. His hands slide up my waist, my ribs, cup my breasts, his thumbs dragging over my nipples, and I ride him harder, my thighs burning, sweat sliding down my spine.
The headboard knocks the wall. His hips thrust up to meet mine and the depth changes and I cry out—sharp, loud, my head tipping back, my nails raking down his chest.
He sits up. One arm around my waist, pulling me flush against his chest, and the angle tightens and I’m grinding against him, my clit pressed against his body, the friction building so fast I can barely breathe.
His mouth on my neck. His teeth in the spot where my neck meets my jaw and I come—shattering, clenching around him, his name tearing out of my throat.
He flips me. My back on the sheets, his body over mine, his hips driving into me, fast, deep, relentless. My legs wrap around him and I pull him closer and his rhythm breaks—stuttering, urgent—and he comes with his face pressed into my neck and a sound that shakes through both of us.
His weight on me. Heavy, real, his heart hammering against my ribs. My fingers in his damp hair. Our breath slowing in the dark.
He rolls onto his back. Our shoulders touch.
“Same time next week?” His voice is a low scrape in the dark room, rough, spent.
I turn my head on the pillow. His profile in the window light—the jaw, the mouth, the dark eyes already watching me. My body is humming, loose and wrecked, buzzing with something that tastes like the first page of a book I haven’t read yet.
“Next week. And the week after that.”
Thank you for reading!