He drops to his knees. Pulls my jeans and underwear down in one motion. Lifts each of my feet out and presses his face between my thighs without preamble. No teasing. No buildup. His mouth is on my pussy, his tongue lashing the swollen bead of my clit until my shoulders slam back against the window hard enough to rattle the glass. I grip the window frame, the ice-cold glass a brutal contrast to the searing heat of his mouth devouring me. He isn’t just eating me; he’s claiming me, using the salt and slickness of my arousal to prove he’s still alive. One hand crushes the meat of my thigh, anchoring me while he shoves two thick fingers deep inside my soaking cunt, curving them upward to hook against my G-spot. The brutal stretch of him, the relentless rhythm of his tongue, and the wet, slapping sounds of his face against my pussy hit me all at once.
My orgasm builds fast. The bourbon and the adrenaline and the fact that I am naked against a hotel window in Montana while a stranger devours me between my legs.
I come with my fist against my mouth. Thighs clamping around his ears. My entire body shaking.
He does not stop until I push his head away.
He stands. Wipes his mouth with the back of his hand. His cock is straining against his trousers and when he unzips and pushes them down he is thick and hard and the head is slick with precum.
He lifts me again. My back against the window. His hands under my thighs. The city lights behind my head and the cold glass against my spine.
He lines his thick, heavy cock up with my opening and rams himself inside me in one devastating stroke. He buries himself to the hilt, stretching my pussy to the breaking point until I can’t even find the air to scream. He fills every inch of me, his balls heavy against my outer lips, holding himself there while my walls clamp down around his shaft in a desperate, rhythmic pulse. He is a predator who has finally found home, and he’s marking the very depth of me with his presence. His eyes are open. Close enough that I can see the grief dissolving into need. Raw and artless and consuming.
“Estrella.” My name against his lips. A whisper. A man holding onto the only word that makes sense.
He moves.
Slow at first. Pulling out until the stretch makes me whimper, then driving back in hard enough that the window rattles. My nails dig into his shoulders. His hands grip my thighs hard enough to leave marks I will carry for a week. The rhythm builds. Faster. Deeper. Skin against skin. My back sliding against the glass. His ragged breathing against my throat.
I am not quiet. I am not careful. I am not the woman Dominic raised.
I am twenty-two and blonde and thin and furious and free for the last time in my life and I give this man every sound my body wants to make. I moan against his ear. My pussy clenches around his cock and his hips stutter and he groans into my neck and the sound goes straight through me like a current.
He carries me to the bed. Lays me down. Pushes back inside before the sheets settle. His weight is on me. His elbows by my head. His hips rolling in long, deep strokes that hit the spot inside me that makes my vision blur. I wrap my legs around his waist and pull him deeper and he drops his face to my throat.
“Estrella.” Again. My name like a prayer from a man who has forgotten how to pray.
I come a second time with his cock buried inside me and his mouth on my throat and tears I will not name running down my temples into my hair. He follows. The hot pulse of his release inside me. His body going rigid and then collapsing. His weight on me. Heavy. Real. The realest thing I have felt in years.
We lie there. The city lights make patterns on the ceiling.
I fall asleep with his arm across my waist and the scent of bourbon and sex in the sheets and the weight of him anchoring me to a moment I will spend five years trying to forget.
I wake at four. The bed is cold.
He is gone. His bag is gone from the chair.
A note on the nightstand. Hotel stationery. Sharp, angular handwriting.
Emergency. I am sorry.
No name. No number.
The last image I carry from that night. His back. Walking toward the door in the pre-dawn dark. The birthmark on his left shoulder blade. Irregular. Dark. A shape my body memorizes without my permission.
I keep the note for three months.
Then I throw it away because there is nothing to do with a ghost.
Six weeks after the flight the test comes back positive.
Two lines. The bathroom of the Costa compound.
Dominic is going to kill me.
I tell him because I have to. There is no hiding a pregnancy in a house with cameras on every floor and cousins who count the tampons in the trash.
Dominic does not yell. He goes quiet. The quiet is worse than any rage because rage burns out. Quiet compounds.