“Margaux—” I don’t let him finish my name, I get a fist in the front of his t-shirt and I kiss him before the second syllable clears his mouth, then he makes a sound against my lips like he wasn’t expecting the door to open at all, let alone like this, or let alone on a Sunday for that matter.
“You don’t— you don’t come on Sundays,” he says, when I finally let him talk, and I’m already walking him backward into the apartment, my flats quiet on the linoleum.
“I’m here…” “I can see that.” His hands find my waist anyway, sweatpants riding low, hair still wet from a shower he took alone 20 minutes ago maybe, and I can smell the cheap shampoo he buys in bulk from the CVS on Westchester Avenue, a scent that’s aggressively ordinary, very much the opposite of the sterile sandalwood void in my husband’s bedroom.
“Milo’s with— with the sitter?” “I don’t want to talk about Milo right now.” “Okay.” He says it slowly, watching my face the way he watches Milo’s when a math problem isn’t landing right.
“What do you wanna— what do you wanna talk about?” “Nothing…” I get my hands under his shirt, feeling the heat of his skin, the lean muscle of his stomach.
“I just…
don’t wanna talk.” He lets me push him into the wall by the door, the one with the chipped paint and the crooked light switch, and for a second neither of us moves, we are just breathing, his hands tightening on my hips like he’s deciding something.
After deliberating, he decides, he flips us in one fluid motion, slamming my back against the wall, the impact jarring my spine, then the kiss turns into something with teeth in it, something that isn’t tender at all, but this is good, because tender is for people who aren’t starving and that’s what Grant does when he’s performing a duty, that absurdly mechanical, polite friction that leaves me feeling more alone than if I were to just become celibate.
I want it gone, I want every thought of my curated life, my silent house, my suffocating marriage replaced with the weight of Jonah and the rough texture of the wall at my back and nothing else.
He kisses my jaw, my throat, his mouth hot and demanding, he works my shirt the rest of the way up, and I drag him back to my mouth because I can’t breathe and I don’t want to.
I want to be consumed, his hands are rough from chlorine and pool decks, and they know exactly where to go now, weeks of practice, he’s mapped every inch of me.
He reaches down, his palm pressing hard against my pussy through my lace panties, and I let out a sound that’s half sob and half growl, raw tearing out of my chest that I didn’t plan and can’t control.
“Hey…” He pulls back an inch, just enough to look at me, his thumb is at my jaw.
“Do you— do you want it?” The question is a knife honestly, because Grant never asks, he just executes and then rolls over.
Being asked is a luxury I didn’t know I’d been starving for, the agency of wanting, and the power of saying yes.
“Yes,” I gasp, my voice wrecked.
“God, yes…
please…
don’t stop.” He doesn’t need to be told twice, he rips my panties aside, the lace snapping, and his fingers dive into me, I’m already soaking wet, my pussy dripping with a desperate, vulgar heat that I only ever feel for him, one that I never felt once in 8 years of marital obligation.
He finds my clit and pins it, rubbing in a brutal, rhythmic circle that makes my knees buckle.
I’m clinging to him, my legs wrapping around his waist, pulling him closer, wanting to merge into the chipped paint of his wall.
He drops to his knees, and I’m pinned against the wall, my legs spread wide, completely exposed in the dim light of his hallway.
He doesn’t hesitate, he buries his face in my soaking wet pussy, his tongue slamming against my clit with a force that makes my whole body jerk.
He’s not being gentle at all now, he’s just eating me alive.
He laps at my swollen lips, dragging his tongue through every slick fold, and I grip his wet hair, hold on, and I’m not performing anymore, I’m not arranging my face or modulating my sounds, I’m grinding my pussy against his mouth and trying to force him deeper.
“Right there.” My voice is shredded, just barely mine.
“Jonah, right there, please— please don’t stop.” He stays locked on, his tongue vibrating against me while his fingers slide deep inside me, stretching my walls, pumping in sync with his mouth.
The pressure builds into a violent, guttural tension, a tension that snaps without warning.
I explode, my walls spasming around his fingers, and I come with a scream that feels like a confession, a loud, filthy admission of how much I need this, how much I hate the woman I am when I’m not in this room.
He stays there through the whole thing, his tongue slowing but not stopping, his hands gripping my thighs to keep me upright because my knees are gone, completely gone, and I’m shaking against the wall while a 26-year-old teacher eats me through the aftershocks and I don’t care that the neighbors can hear.
I don’t care about anything except the fact that Grant has never once, in 8 years, made me make a sound like that.
He doesn’t move from his knees right away, his mouth is still on my thigh, his breath hot and uneven, and I can feel the wetness cooling on my skin, the mess we’ve already made, and I’m not done, I’m not even close to being done, I reach down and grab the front of his t-shirt and pull him up, and then I’m the one dropping to my knees, the linoleum cold through my jeans, and I yank his sweatpants down and his cock is right there, thick, hard, flushed and already slick with pre-cum at the tip, and I don’t wait, I don’t tease, I just take him in my mouth and feel the weight of him on my tongue.
He tastes like salt and skin and the faint chemical sweetness of the soap he uses, nothing fancy, nothing curated, and I close my eyes and just feel it, the stretch of my lips around him, the way my jaw has to work to take him deeper.
His hand finds my hair, not pushing, just resting there, fingers threading through the roots, and I let him hold on because I want him to, and I also want him anchored to something while I do this.
I pull back slow, letting my tongue drag along the underside, tracing the vein that runs the length of his cock, and then I take him even deeper, until the tip nudges the back of my throat, my gag reflex flickers but I breathe through it, I want him to feel that and I want him to know I’m choosing to stay here, on my knees, on his linoleum floor, with the rug burns still stinging from earlier and the wall still holding the heat of my back.
I’m not performing, I’m not trying to impress him, I’m just doing what I want to do, and what I want is to feel him come apart for me.
He groans, low and wrecked, and the sound vibrates through his stomach under my palm, and I look up at him, my mouth still wrapped around his cock, and his face is destroyed.
Jaw slack, eyes heavy-lidded, his composure completely gone.
He’s not the teacher now, he’s not the careful, controlled man who asks permission before he touches me, he’s just a body responding to mine, and I’m the reason his breathing sounds like that, ragged and uneven, his chest rising and falling like he’s been running.
I hollow my cheeks and suck harder, my tongue working the sensitive spot just under the head, and his hips jerk forward, involuntary, and I let him hit the back of my throat again, deeper this time, and my eyes sting but I don’t care.
His fingers tighten in my hair, just gripping like I’m the only solid thing in the room.
The sound he makes next isn’t a word, isn’t my name, it’s just noise, raw and involuntary, pulled out of him by my mouth, my tongue and the wet, sloppy rhythm I’ve built.
I feel him getting close, the pulse of him against my tongue, the way his hips lose their rhythm and start chasing mine, but I don’t slow down, I speed up.
I take him as deep as I can and I suck hard, my throat tight around him, and when he comes it’s with a groan that cracks right through him, his body folding forward, one hand braced against the wall above me, the other still in my hair, shaking.
I swallow and feel the heat of him slide down my throat and I stay there, my mouth still on him, until his breathing slows and his hand relaxes in my hair then he says my name like a question he doesn’t know how to finish.
I sit back and wipe my mouth with the back of my hand and look up at him, wrecked and sweating and still half-braced against the wall like his legs might give out, and I think: this is the only honest thing I’ve done all week.
We don’t move for a long time.
Then we end up on the floor somehow, my back against his bed, my legs over his, his t-shirt back on inside out and neither of us bothering to fix it.
The rug burns on my knees from where I must have slid down and didn’t even notice.
He gets 2 glasses of water from the kitchenette, hands me one, and doesn’t ask anything for a long minute.
“What— what happened?” “Nothing happened…” “Margaux?” “Bad day.” I drink the water like it’s the only thing keeping me upright.
“That’s all, okay?” He looks at me for a second too long, the way he does when he knows there’s more but decides not to chase it, because he’s 26 and he’s in love with a married woman on borrowed time, and pushing isn’t a luxury he’s ever had with me.
He pulls his arm around my shoulders instead, and I let him, for a while we just sit there, his thumb moving against my arm, the swim team photo watching us from the fridge.
“What are we doing, Jonah?” He doesn’t answer right away, I feel him think about it, feel the breath go out of him slowly.
“I don’t…
know.” “Can you figure it out before I do?” I set the glass down on the floor by my foot because my hand isn’t steady enough to hold it anymore.
“Because I’m— I’m scared of what my answer’s gonna be.”