Chapter 32
Chapter 32
Louis crossed the corridor without thinking. Her door was ajar. He pushed it open and stepped inside. The door clicked shut behind him. Gladice stood at the window with her back to him.
“Lock it,” she said.
He locked the door. Then she turned to face him and watched him cross the room.
“Stop standing there like you’re waiting for permission,” she said quietly.
Louis stopped in front of her. He smelled bourbon on her breath. His cock was already hard. Louis grabbed her and pulled her tight against him. He kissed her hard, pushing his tongue into her mouth. She opened for him at once. He licked across her lips, caught her tongue, and sucked on it while his hands moved over her waist and down to her ass. Gladice reached between them, opened his trousers, and wrapped her hand around his cock.
Louis groaned as her hand tightened around his cock. He shoved her skirt up, slipped his hand inside her panties, and found her already wet. He ran two fingers through her folds. Gladice spread her legs and pressed herself into his hand while she continued stroking him. She laughed quietly against his lips. “Eager.”
He kissed her again. Keeping one hand inside her panties, he opened her blouse with the other. Gladice pulled it off her shoulders while she continued stroking him. A baby-blue cotton bra lifted and pressed her full breasts together, leaving deep cleavage.
“Blue,” he said in a rough voice.
“Like the ocean,” she murmured. She yanked his trousers down along with his underwear. “Your turn.”
His cock sprang free. He kissed her again and groaned into her mouth. He cupped her breast through the cotton, feeling her nipple harden under his palm.
She pulled back just enough to speak. “Bed.”
Louis followed her to the bed. She pulled his shirt from his shoulders, then unzipped her skirt and pushed it down her legs. She stepped out of it and kicked it aside. A dark wet patch showed through the matching panties.
She sat on the bed, leaned back on her elbows, and spread her legs.
“Are you going to make me do all the work?”
Louis climbed onto the bed and knelt between her legs. He bent over her, burying his face between her breasts. He rubbed his face against them, breathing in her perfume and the faint milky scent of her skin. His cock pressed hard into the bedspread. He pulled the cotton cups down and exposed her breasts. She gripped his shoulder with one hand as he closed his mouth around one nipple. He sucked it until she gasped. Her other hand grabbed his hair and held his mouth against her breast.
“Yes,” she breathed. “Just like that.”
He moved to her other nipple and sucked it while he rubbed her through the wet cotton. She moaned, raised her hips into his hand, and opened her legs wider. He moved down the bed, kissed her stomach once, and lowered his face between her thighs. He stopped close to her panties and breathed in. He recognized the warm scent from the powder room. For a second he saw Gladice sitting on the toilet, legs apart, watching him wipe urine from her pussy. His face burned at the memory. He was still angry with her. But now, with his cock throbbing, all he wanted was to taste her.
Louis hooked his fingers under her panties. Gladice raised her hips, and he pulled them down her legs and tossed them aside. A clear strand stretched from the wet cotton before it broke. He looked between her legs. A small triangle of trimmed hair rested above her pussy. Her labia were slightly swollen and slick, the skin and hair around them wet. He lowered his mouth and dragged his tongue between her folds. She tasted salty, with a faint sweetness beneath it. Her fingers closed in his hair as he licked her again.
Louis closed his lips around her clit and sucked. Then he dragged his tongue down and pushed it into her. Her wetness mixed with his spit until his mouth and chin were soaked. He licked back up to her clit, then down into her again. Her fingers tightened in his hair, and her moans grew louder above him. He kept going until his tongue began to ache and go numb. Her thighs closed around his head. Her pussy clenched around his tongue, and she cried out. The taste of her orgasm flooded his tongue. He swallowed it.
He rose onto his knees. His cock ached from how hard it was, and precum had already run from the tip.
“Someone’s been waiting a long time.” Gladice looked down at his cock and bit her lower lip.
He moved between her legs and pushed them wider with his knees. He rubbed the head of his cock through her wet folds. The wetness coated him before he pressed against her opening. Gladice reached between them, wrapped her hand around his cock, and guided the head inside her.
He pushed into her slowly and watched her face. Her lips parted as she let out a breath. She was hot and tight around him. The pressure nearly made him come. He stopped with only part of himself inside her and took a breath.
Gladice dug her nails into his back, lifted her hips, and pulled the rest of him inside.
“Come on,” she murmured against his mouth. “Fuck me, Louis.”
He groaned and began to thrust, pulling almost all the way out before driving back into her. Gladice lifted her hips with him and locked her legs around his waist. Her heels pressed into his lower back. The bed creaked with every thrust. Her moans rose over the wet slap of his hips against her. Her chest and stomach were slick with sweat, and her breasts bounced hard each time he drove into her. Louis grabbed one and squeezed it while he kept fucking her. She was hot and slick around him, tightening whenever he pulled back.
His balls tightened. He clenched his jaw and held back. He lowered himself against her, rubbing her clit as he kept thrusting.
She cried out and looked straight at him.
“Fuck—right there—don’t stop.”
Louis wrapped his arms around her and pulled her tight against him. Their sweat-soaked bodies pressed together as he kept thrusting. Each stroke sent a hot, burning sensation through the head of his cock. It grew stronger until his thighs began to shake and he could barely hold back. He drove in deep and held there, groaning low as he emptied himself inside her in shuddering waves.
“Louis!” Gladice cried. Her pussy trembled around him as her legs tightened around his waist. Her eyes lost focus for a second.
Louis stayed inside her until his breathing slowed. Their sweaty bodies still clung together. Then he pulled out and watched a thick white strand slip from her pussy, run over her swollen folds, and soak into the sheet beneath her. The relief faded almost at once. He wished he had stayed inside her longer.
Gladice followed his gaze and laughed, still short of breath.
“Enjoying the view?” she asked.
Louis looked down at her. She looked pleased with herself.
“Yes,” he admitted.
She reached up and brushed a damp strand of hair back from his forehead.
“Good,” she said quietly. “Because you’re allowed to want things, Louis. Even the ones that aren’t clean.”
He thought he believed her. He rolled onto his back beside her and covered his eyes with one arm. The air felt cool against the sweat on his skin. His breathing began to slow.
He could still taste her at the back of his mouth. He could still feel her around his cock. For a few minutes, he had stopped trying to control himself. Now the execution chamber returned in pieces: white industrial light, concrete dust drifting after the shot, the crack from Bay Four, the prisoner’s body jerking and falling.
Gladice watched him.
“You’re already thinking about him again, aren’t you?” she said.
Louis stared at the pale ceiling.
He turned onto his side to face her. “Does that make me weak?”
She propped herself up on one elbow. The sheet slipped to her hip. There was no mockery in her face now. She studied him before answering.
“It makes you complicated,” she said. “And I like complicated men.”
Louis exhaled and looked back at the ceiling.
Angelique was in the room beyond his own. At first Louis pictured only the door. Then he saw her at the memorial, her face cold and still; the terrace the night before; the way she had told him to be stronger; the kiss in the scrub even while she was furious with him. He closed his eyes, but the images remained.
When he opened them, Gladice had moved closer. She lay against him, one leg over his and one hand on his stomach.
“Stay a little longer,” she said. “You don’t have to be anyone’s perfect son for now.”
He sank into the pillow and looked toward the window. The sky outside had turned gray. He lay still beneath the weight of her leg and listened to her breathing slow against him. His own had not steadied yet. Neither, he thought, had anything else. Nothing had been solved. Nothing had even been put in order. But something had been chosen.
He looked once more toward the chair by the window where his jacket hung in the thickening dark, and imagined the small warped weight of the locket. He wondered what it meant to want private objects out of public catastrophe, private bodies out of public days, private relief out of a life built almost entirely in view of others.
Gladice’s fingers moved once against his skin. Outside, somewhere far below, a siren rose and fell and was gone. The city continued without asking what any of them had done in its shadow. Louis lay in the darkening room beside the mayor’s daughter, warm from her body, marked by her touch, and understood with sudden clarity that the guilt would not come later. It was already here. And he was not leaving.