Page 43 of Tourist Season
“Like you mean it,” she says, dropping a weighted look at the tie lying over her shoulder before she turns to face forward. “Punish me. Fuck me like you’ll never forgive me.”
I’m sure I leave my body.
I wrap both ends of the tie around my hand and twist until it’s flush against her neck, and then I pull out of her, banding an arm around her waist, and lift her away from the counter. I carry her to the living room and drop her on her knees on the couch, leaving just enough slack in the tie to not choke her. She lets out a whimper when I lay my free hand between her shoulders to press her chest down, keeping her ass up, her pussy glistening in the dim light. I settle behind her and twist that tie again, just tight enough that she shudders, but the breath still flows unobstructed through her lungs.
“You heard me earlier,” I say as I notch the crown of my cock to her entrance. And I don’t think it’s just a reminder, but a veiled plea when I say, “Tell me to stop. Tap out.”
A dark, mirthless laugh escapes her. “And you heard me. You loathe me. So go ahead. Try to fuckingdestroyme. I deserve that much after everything, don’t you think?”
With a growl, I smack her ass hard and then push into her tight heat as deep as her body will take me, her moan rippling through the tie clutched in my hand.
I glide out to the tip and slam back in, picking up a punishing rhythm of deep, merciless strokes. Her pussy cinches tight around my girth as though she can’t bear to let me go. Arousal smears down her thighs. My palm hits her ass, connecting over and over until it reddens. Her sounds of pleasure rise around me, lingering in the air on the musky scent of sex. Every time I grip those loops of fabric tighter, she somehow still matches my thinning restraint and dares me to take everything I can. With each brutal thrust and every impact of my hand against her ass, I’m the one who is shredded apart, destroyed by my desperate desire for her.
“More,” Harper grits out as I reach around to swirl my fingers over her clit. Sweat shimmers over her back, illuminated by the glow in her skin. I swear I feel every one of her heartbeats pulse around me as she climbs closer to an orgasm. “Give me more.”
The tie tightens in my grip and she moans out a breath. “I”—I thrust so hard she pitches forward with a yelp—“fucking”—I do it again, and her moan fills the room—“hate”—another vicious thrust and her arousal coats my hand—“you.”
“I fucking hate you too,” she rasps as I fuck her mercilessly. “And if you don’t make me come, I’m going kill you with my bare fucking hands.”
I thrust faster. Harder. I work her clit with slick fingers and she lets out an agonized cry of need. A hiss escapes my lips as an electric current crackles at the base of my spine. “Goddamn. I could fuck you right into the afterlife.”
Her channel tightens around me. She loves those threatening words that could be a promise as much as a fantasy. So I tell her more, leaning closer to her ear to whisper desires shaped by darkness and sin.Maybe I should grip your throat between my palms and squeeze until you can’t breathe. Is that what you want? To beg me for airas I fill your pussy until it fucking overflows? Maybe I should spin you around and tighten this noose as you choke on my cock. You’d look so pretty with your face all red and your eyes bloodshot as you swallow me down. You want my cum to be the last thing you ever taste?
It’s not just my dick stretching her pussy or my touch on her clit that throws her over the edge. It’s those fantasies I whisper. She screams my name as she comes apart, and I fall over the cliff with her, my length pulsing, my cock lodged deep as I fill her. I don’t loosen my hold on the tie until the last ropes of cum have been spent and my heartbeat riots in my ears, muffling all the sounds in the room. Only then do I let the belt around her neck go, but still I remain buried in her warmth, not ready to leave. I’m not sure I ever will be. And that thought terrifies me, because as exhilarating as it is to be embraced by her warmth, it still feels forbidden. Like I’m taking something I never should have. Like I’m betraying everything I’ve set out to do since the day I woke up in that hospital bed four years ago. But I still want it, as much as I want justice. I wanther.
And I have no fucking idea what she’s thinking.
Her back still to me, her forehead pressed to her arm as she recovers her breath. I’m trying to find a way to ask when a chime sounds from the direction of the hallway. The washing machine. It’s a dart of the mundane that bursts this cocoon of sweat and skin and unsteady exhalations.
I pull out of her slowly, riveted by the sight of my glistening cock sliding out of her swollen pink flesh, tracers of light and color following the motion. “Stay there,” I say when I’m free, watching as the first drops of cum gather at her entrance to slide down her thighs. “I’ll be right back.”
She doesn’t answer. I leave her to transfer the clothes into thedryer, then head to the bathroom to gather a warm washcloth and a towel so I can clean her up. I’m distracted a second time by my reflection. I don’t recognize this version of me. One who is motivated by something other than revenge, if only for a moment. One whose purpose seems fogbound. This moment seems so far away from the cataclysm that propelled me here. Maybe I want to see where I end up when the fog clears, if it’s somewhere different than I thought I would be.
I give myself a final once-over, then return to the living room. But Harper is already gone. Her robe is no longer on the floor. Mine is laid neatly across the back of the couch alongside a blanket and towel and two pillows. There’s a glass of water and a bottle of ibuprofen on the side table. I hear a creak upstairs, and I know by the position it must be coming from her bedroom.
I stand naked in the center of the room for a long while, the washcloth cooling in my hand. I don’t know what I wanted in the aftermath, but it wasn’t this.
Eventually, I put the robe on and sit in the armchair, staring at the geometric patterns that shift across the floor. Maybe the mushrooms are starting to wear off a bit, because that’s the only thing that seems strange around me. There are no more vibrant lights, no sounds that become colors across my vision.
I don’t move at all for a long while, not until the dryer beeps to snap me out of my daydream as I try to relive every moment of this night with Harper, from the way her eyes drifted closed when I touched her face and told her she was beautiful in the river, to the one where I pulled free of her pussy, staining her thighs. With a deep sigh, I head to the closet and fold the laundry, setting mine on an armchair before I hesitate at the bottom of the stairs with her clothes balanced on my palm. And before I can talk myself outof it, I’m carefully taking every step in silence until I’m on the landing of the second story.
Her bedroom door is ajar, light pouring through the crack. At first, I think she might be awake, but she’s not. Her deep, even breaths spill out into the hall. Just like the night when I killed Jake, she’s sleeping with not one lamp on, but two. It seems strange, like it did then, to sleep with not just a night-light to guide her way if she wakes, but two lamps to keep out the shadows. Her life seems surrounded by darkness, and as I slip into her room, I can’t understand why she would find discomfort in it when she sleeps.
I stand at the threshold of Harper’s room and watch the rise and fall of her chest beneath a patchwork quilt. The things I would have done in this moment if it happened mere weeks ago.
And now, I feel as though I shouldn’t enter her private space uninvited. Every step I take closer to her, I know I should stop. I shouldn’t set her folded clothes on the dresser, or stop beside her bed to loom over her sleeping form like a specter. I shouldn’t be lowering to my knees, my face so close to hers that I can smell the mint of toothpaste on her breath, or lifting my hand to shift a lock of damp hair away from her neck. I definitely should not place a kiss to her cheek. But I’m as powerless as the sea is against the moon. I’m caught in the gravitational force of her despite the dark chasm that spans between us.
I lay my lips to her skin so gently that she doesn’t stir, doesn’t wake. But when I pull away, Harper glows.
HARPOONNolan
THE LIGHT STREAMING THROUGH THEgap between the curtains lands on my face like a slap.
“Fucking hell, I feel like shit.”
I stretch, my body already protesting a crappy sleep on a couch that’s too short for my six-foot-three height. My elbow aches. My knee throbs. My neck protests when I try to turn to the left to look at my watch. It’s nearly ten-thirty in the morning. I’m the kind of person who’s usually awake by six. But then I guess that’s what happens when someone drugs you with mushrooms and you don’t come down from your high until four in the morning.
With a groan, I sit up and take in my surroundings. “Harper?”
