Page 69 of Vivacity
‘Fuck, I’m going to come,’ she says with a sob. ‘Please, Ethan—fuck.’
I slide my hand around her neck and grip it hard, holding her in place so I can really go for it. I’m leaving nothing on the table. I’m damn well milking this fuck for every last drop of annihilation it can provide—for both of us.
‘Damn right you are.’
I piston harder, deeper, slamming into her over and over. I am one-hundred-percent out of control, completely unmoored, and I’m totally fine with it. I dig my fingers hard into her hip so I can hit her exactly where she needs every time. And as she falls apart, those exquisite, heaven-sent inner walls contracting as she screams out her release, I’m catapulted into another plane entirely.
Finally, I allow myself to detonate too. My dick fills with cum, going so impossibly rigid inside her that I may not survive this, and there’s a moment of stillness, of exhilaration, so potent it feels like asphyxiation, need coursing around my body and threatening to take me under. And then I’m releasing deep inside her, my entire body shuddering with a violence I’ve rarely known, and I’m coming and coming and coming, pumping rope after hot ropeinside her body, and the relief, the pleasure, obliterates everything that is not it.
Every last thing.
CHAPTER 31
Ethan
I’m lying on my back, boneless and weightless and sated, Sophia’s body draped half over me. She’s lying on her stomach in the crook of my arm, cushiony breasts pressed against my chest and face against my neck, one leg thrown over my thighs and her long black locks painting my torso, my upper arms. My cum trickles slowly out of her body, pooling stickily on my inner thigh, but I couldn’t give a shit. I like that it’s been inside her. With what tattered shreds of energy I have left, I pull her tighter in against me and let the fingers of my other hand drift idly through her silken strands of hair.
Never in living memory have I felt quite so replete. So at peace. From the way Soph is sprawled across me, I suspect she feels the same.
‘That was exactly what I needed,’ I confess after a few moments of blissful silence.
‘Good. Clearly, it was my pleasure.’ She hesitates. ‘You doing okay, though?’
‘Yeah. I am now.’
‘Was it really that bad?’
I’m unsure if it’s the lingering effect of my orgasm, or the fact that we’re not making eye contact in this position, but Ifeel marginally better able to handle the idea of discussing my therapy session. ‘No. Not at the time.’
It was… good, actually, in an odd way. That vision, or whatever you’d call it, of myself as a little boy was seriously unexpected and extremely discomfiting. But as Philip wrapped up our session, I felt a strange sense of something I suppose was peace. Or relief. Like I was the slightest bit lighter.
That all disappeared in the car. I tried to bury myself in emails but found myself instead looking out the window as my driver inched slowly back through the centre of town from Philip’s practice in Russell Square.
The thing I didn’t raise with him, the thing I couldn’t get through my head, was how angry I felt. Angry with my father for being such a gigantic cunt, for bullying a kid like that, stacking the odds against him and making the stakes so high. It wasn’t fair, any of it, and while Philip had me relay that message to my younger self, I couldn’t help but think in the car that I’d slaughter anyone who treated Jamie like that. I’d fucking tear them limb from limb.
But here I am, so terrified of any kind of intimacy with my own son that I can’t engage with him in even the most basic way. Philip’s chilling line is still with me.Sounds like he didn’t need to hit you.Sure, my father is an egocentric bully, but am I any better? Am I damaging my son irreversibly with my own brand of cruelty? Am I no more deserving of being a parent than Richard Kingsley?
I didn’t love today. It was miles out of my comfort zone, and I’m still not entirely convinced it’s not weird shit, but I do know this: I need to do something to repair relations with my son, and if Soph thinks this is a decent place to start, then I’ll damn well sit my arse in that saggy armchair once a week until I can look myself in the mirror again.
I blow out a shuddery breath and smooth a palm over Sophia’s hair.
‘I can practically hear you spiralling,’ she observes into my neck.
She’s not wrong. I sigh. ‘I got a tiny glimpse this afternoon into the infinite void of my fucked-upness. What if I’m too broken to fix?’
She pushes herself up onto one arm and looks down at me. Her face is still flushed, her lips swollen from the kisses I gave her after pulling out of her and tugging her down on top of me, and her dark eyes are soft.
‘Woah. You are not broken, mister, you hear me? Nowhere near.’
‘I don’t know about that,’ I say feebly. This eye contact thing isn’t so bad after all. Whatever is in her eyes, it’s not pity. It’s fiercer than that, which is a relief. I don’t think I could bear it if it was.
‘Listen to me. I know a lot about this stuff, okay? Every coping mechanism that you’ve developed, you’ve done for a reason. Even the ones that aren’t serving you anymore or are holding you back. Look, I don’t know a tonne about your childhood, but I’m beginning to get an idea. The truth is, if you had a parent who withheld love or who felt like a source of danger at times, the chances are you developed beautiful, self-protective strategies that allowed you to survive before you were even old enough to dress yourself. How amazing is that?’
She smiles at me, and it may be the most stunning sight I’ve ever seen. ‘That is not the hallmark of someone who’s broken,’ she continues. ‘In fact, it’s precisely the opposite. All you’re doing now is working on shedding all that armour so you can live the life you’re meant to live, full of love and connection and wonderful relationships. And I promise you, the scariest part is showing up. Over and over. It’s scary for all of us to dig deeplike this. But we practise, and we develop those muscles, and—this is super important—we learn to regulate in between so that we build our capacity to hold all these confronting things. And the more you regulate, and the more grace you give yourself, the more you’ll find you can handle this. Yeah?’
To think I hired her for her looks. Her sexuality. Her vibe. She might just be an Oracle. To be honest, everything she’s saying sounds terrifying, but the thought of carrying on like this is even more terrifying. That memory of my father today really rattled me. I have to find a way to be a better man than him. I owe it to Jamie and Elena. And, if I’m entirely honest with myself, I need to find a way to control all these demons that seem to hijack me. I can’t be at their mercy anymore, and that’s what’s galvanising me.
‘Yeah.’ I extricate my hand from her mane of hair and stroke her neck. Her shoulder. Her skin is so, so soft. ‘When did you get so wise?’
