7. Nathan Sr
NATHAN SR
I stop beside the driver’s door and rest my palm flat on the roof while traffic rolls past the parking lot entrance. A pair of headlights cuts across the windshield before disappearing down the street. My phone stays pressed to my ear while I watch the restaurant window behind me.
“Cindy,” I reply, not bothering to keep the disgust from my voice.
She laughs softly, pleased with herself. “Good,” she replies. “You still remember me.”
I slide into the driver’s seat and shut the door. My fingers rest against the steering wheel while I stare through the windshield toward the street. “What do you want?”
“Oh, don’t start like that,” Cindy whines. “We haven’t spoken in years.”
I resist the impulse to hit something in front of me. “That was intentional.”
Her breath hitches with a faint laugh. “You’ve always been charming.”
My thumb taps once against the steering wheel. I already know she didn’t call to reminisce. “Say what you called to say.”
“Well,” she replies, voice bright with satisfaction, “you’ve been very busy lately.”
My brow tightens. “Have I.”
“Oh yes.”
There’s a brief pause, the kind people use when they know they’re about to land a blow. “Tell me,” she continues, “how is Athena?”
The name drops into the space between us.
I sit still for a moment then reach down and start the car without answering. The engine turns over quietly while the dashboard lights flicker on. “That’s none of your business.”
“Isn’t it?”
My phone vibrates against my ear in what sounds like a message arriving. I pull the phone away and glance at the screen. The photograph loads in silence.
Athena and I stand outside the pizzeria, her hand wrapped around mine while she laughs up at me. My head is bent toward her. The angle makes it look intimate and private.
Someone took the picture from across the street.
My eyes narrow into slits.
“Well,” Cindy says through the phone, sounding delighted. “You received it.”
I lean back in the seat and study the image for another second before darkening the screen. “Where did you get this?”
“Oh Nathan,” she says. “Cities are full of people who enjoy sharing information.”
My voice lowers into something that leaves no room for games. “You followed us.”
She tuts on the other end. “That’s such an ugly word.”
I rest my elbow against the door and look out through the windshield. “What do you want?”
“Straight to business,” she murmurs. “You always did know how to ruin a conversation.”
My fingers flex against the wheel. “Answer the question.”
Another message arrives.
I open it.
This photo is closer.
Athena’s fingers are laced through mine while she leans into my shoulder, her smile open and careless in the way it gets when she forgets anyone else exists.
For a moment I just look at it.
“You see the problem,” Cindy says sweetly.
I lock the phone and drop it onto the center console.
“You’re not hurting me with that.”
“No,” she agrees. “But I can make things inconvenient.”
I turn my head slightly, staring out through the windshield while a car pulls past the lot entrance.
“Inconvenient how.”
“Well,” she says thoughtfully, “you are the Chief of Trauma Surgery at Hawthorne Children’s I want to fuck her brains out, pin her down and bury myself so deep in her that she feels my pulse in her throat.
“I’ve got two fingers pumping inside me,” she says, voice trembling, “and my thumb on my clit, little circles like you do, and I’m dripping all over my sheets, Nathan, I can’t—”
“Faster,” I rasp, unzipping my fly, dragging my cock free and wrapping my fingers around it. “Pretend it’s my hand. Curl your fingers the way I did when I made you scream in the bathroom.”
Her breathing stutters, turns ragged. The muffled sound of her fingers fucking herself comes through in wet little pulses that make my vision darken. She whimpers, throat catching on my name, then bites down on the word Daddy like it saves her.
“Come for me,” I command, and she keens—a raw, helpless sound.
She sobs my name, legs trembling, breath shuddering, every sound a jagged plea.
I stroke faster, fist pumping, thumb dragging over the head of my cock while her orgasm crackles through the speaker.
I picture her hips arching, her body spasming, her fingers coated in cum and shaking as she uses them to ride the crest.
“Feel that?” I snarl. “That’s me praising you. That’s me watching you fall apart because I told you to.”
She’s still quivering when she whispers, “I want your cock now,” and the guttural hunger in it knocks whatever composure I was pretending to have into dust. I tighten my grip, jerk harder.
“Tell me how you’d take it if I were there.”
“I’d climb into your lap,” she gasps, voice shredded, “and sink down on you until you were buried deep, I’d hold your shoulders and ride you slow, then grind faster, slide up and slam down, fuck, I’d milk every drop out of you.”
“Keep talking.”
“I’d lean forward and bite your throat,” she whispers. “I’d tell you to keep holding mine, to keep me still while you drilled into me, I’d beg you to come inside, Nathan, I’d make you mess me up—”
I let go with a guttural growl, heat blasting through me.
Cum spills across my fist and stomach and steering wheel while I ride the release out, every muscle locked.
I don’t try to hide the sound I make. She exhales on the other end, soft and satisfied, like a woman who just watched proof of her own power.
“Next time,” she says quietly, still breathing hard, “you show up at my door and do that with your mouth, not your words.”
The line goes quiet after she says it. I keep the phone against my ear for a beat, then I end the call and set it face down on the seat.
I sit there with the engine still running, shirt tugged half-untucked, belt undone, tie loosened. I wipe my hand with a crumpled napkin from the glove box, then tuck myself back in with efficient movements that don’t match what’s still burning under my skin.
Athena’s not like anyone I’ve ever met. She doesn’t take so much as she gives, and that’s apparent even in what kind of sex she enjoys. I pick up the phone again and scroll to the photos Cindy sent.
Athena laughing up at me, hand in mine.
Athena leaning in like she already decided.
I don’t delete them. I save them to a secure folder and lock it down, then I take screenshots of the message timestamps and Cindy’s number. If she wants to play games, I’ll keep receipts. I’m a man with a career built on pressure, and I know how to hold a line.
I start driving again, slower now, and I take the long route back toward my side of town. The road clears. The city settles. My thoughts keep moving anyway.
Cindy can call HR, the board, even donors. She’ll act like she’s protecting the hospital while she enjoys the burn.
I’ll be ready. I’ll remind them that I’ve spent my entire career dragging strangers back from death while they sign forms and call it leadership.
Cindy won’t get Athena through me.
That part is already decided.
Athena doesn’t need saving, but she does need a man who stays. A man who doesn’t treat her like a placeholder while he shops for easier options. A man who doesn’t punish her for having a spine. Nate never was that man.
He had her loyalty and her patience and her love, and he treated it like it would replenish itself forever.
I pull into my driveway and cut the engine. I rest my hand on the steering wheel and breathe until the edge comes off my pulse.
My phone pings again. Nate.
Grimacing, I unlock the screen.
Nate: Morning tomorrow? I’m coming by for breakfast.
I stare at the message for a minute before typing back.
Nathan: 9.
The reply arrives fast.
Nate: Perfect. See you then.