Work Text:
Bokeh
The shutter clicks under her finger. A blink, hollow fwip, and she drags her thumb over the film advance. Through the lens; a tall, broad man in a dark suit steps out the front doors of a club, pulling on a black coat, another man following him out. They talk. Shake hands. The other man, shorter, older, blows out a plume of smoke; the back of his knuckles tattooed with ink, a cigarette pinched between his thumb and forefinger when he pulls it out of his mouth to speak. Through the lens, there’s a scar over his lip. She captures it in another fwip, click, drag of her thumb.
It’s muscle memory, instinctive; focus, forefinger, thumb. A thoughtless rhythm.
She flips her lens quickly as the man in the suit walks down the steps of the club behind him, adjusting the collar of his coat in the light rain. The neon lights of the club’s sign hum a gold-tinted glow over the sidewalk, EMPIRE, in thin, gold block letters. She zooms in, her shutter fwips; an SUV idles on the curb and the lights of the city spill in the rain, against metal and wet concrete, blurred and softly-bright like it’s paint on the edge of a pallet knife.
Van Gogh meeting Afremov. Monet meeting Matisse.
New York meeting a dream.
The man says something to the driver before sinking into the backseat; it pulls away from the curb a moment later.
Ellie lowers her camera, wiping off the lens before capping it and tucking it under her jacket, still looped around her neck. In her head, she can see the photos already: gold-tinged puddles, red from the changing stop light streaking over the car like paint smears; the man, a steady focal point the world blurs into colours around.
He’s forty-two.
Disgustingly wealthy. And not a generational wealth like so many that fill the pages of Forbes and Bloomberg and the Wall Street Journal. Twitter doesn’t have much to say about him. He’s scandal-free. He donates to charities. He has no online presence except for a name.
There’s no inheritance, no prelude to his wealth, he is a Self-Made Man, they write, the American Dream. There’s not much information in the interviews he’s given, charming, they write, a rakish grin edged in a boyish charm.
Ellie’s read the pages a hundred times. Sometimes, in her mind, he’s Gatsby, a lavish man doused in champagne and dreams trying to convince everyone that money and worth and happiness go hand-in-hand. Sometimes, he’s Rochester or Darcy, but with the ability to charm with that rakish smile they say he has; or maybe, she thinks, he just had an Elizabeth or Jane that taught him how to be less of an asshole somewhere along the way.
He is married, after all.
It’s there on Google, Nicolas Cordova, 1988, (age 42 years, born New York, New York, United States.)
Spouse: Irina Sokolova (m.2028)
But mostly, he’s a boy in a faded photograph taken twenty-five years ago, with the same sort of crooked smile that he has in the photos online. There are more lines at the edges of his eyes now, but that boy is still there, in the smile, twenty-five years later.
In the low red light of her makeshift darkroom, Ellie holds the photo in the chemical bath, watching the shape of him bleed up in dark shades, like ink or watercolour, eating fibres under the tip of a brush.
He’s there, the angles of his face filling in, familiar and not, known and not.
She doesn’t look like him.
In the mirror, later, when she showers off the metallic, chemical smell of developing photos, she’s still the same girl she was before. Blonde, blue-eyed. Her mother’s daughter.
No amount of photos will change the angles of her face or his. No photo will change that he’s a stranger. A man she knows in name and photo, only.
She’s too old to be nervous.
She’s not a child. She doesn’t need him. She’s fully grown, fully formed; she loves her mother. Her childhood wasn’t a thing lacking. He’s a black and white photo she’s trying to colour in. A bit of paint stuck under her skin that bleeds out sometimes when she thinks about him or rather, the idea of him. He’s a childish idea that clings on to her bones, a voice at the back of her head that’s too small and too young, and knew the sound of her mother’s frustration, Ellie, stop asking.
She doesn’t need him, but the voice, too young, too small says, why don’t I have a daddy? Mommy, everyone else has a daddy—
She’s not a child. She’s too old to be nervous. She knows his name and the shape of him through her camera lens, across busy New York streets, bleeding up on a photo in the dark red of her make-shift darkroom like blood from a cut— she knows enough now, that she could walk away—
But still, on the ride up the elevator, she leans against the wall and closes her eyes; inhales through her nose, one-two-three-four—and out, four-three-two-one.
The elevator dings and the doors slide open. His secretary is sharp but kind, Mister Cordova will be with you in a moment. Have a seat, dear.
When her hand slides into his, and her name spills between them, he looks down at her with this edge of something in his eyes, a curl, shadow, in the corner of his lips, like he’s been waiting for her.
Ellie, he says like he already knows her name.
(She thinks, maybe, he knew about her, maybe her mother didn’t lie and he chose to leave... but when she says it, when she works up the nerve to put daughter between them, she catches it, a blink of surprise in his eyes.)
They go for coffee, after. Black, for him, a lemon tea for her, she’s too jittery for caffeine. I work early, she says, and it’s not a lie, not exactly, don’t want to be up late.
He’s tall next to her, his arm brushes hers in line, she insists on buying her own; he doesn’t owe me anything, she could be wrong, anyway. You might not be, she’d said, it’s just...I’m pretty sure you are.
He doesn’t let her; a smile at the baristas, crooked, charming, the thing from the pages online, handing over a black credit card; one large hand brushing the small of Ellie’s back as they step off to the side to wait.
The test results, when they come in, are positive.
But after coffees, lunches, walks through Central Park with potato bureka, scallion pancakes, focaccia still steaming from her work, freshly made from me to you-- there are things photos can’t catch from across the street. No lens or aperture setting will catch the dimples that come out when he smiles, a full, real smile, a head-tilted-back, chest-deep sort of laugh. Or the shade of his eyes-- the same she sees in the mirror, leaning forward across a porcelain-cold sink. Nose to glass, blue-grey, flecks of hazel around the pupil.
Neither one, she thinks, need the test results.
You should come, she says, and she isn’t even sure if she means it. He’s not a secret, but as soon as the words are out of her mouth, she thinks about the photos pressed between pages of books in her room. About Mya, flipping through a new pile of prints and stopping on one, one she missed in the shuffle, oh, who’s the daddy?
No one, she’d said, swallowing her heartbeat and biting back the urge to rip the photo out of Mya’s hands and tuck him safely back between book pages the way he should be. Just a guy.
He’s not a secret. It’s just... easier not to explain him.
“It’s just a few drinks. When’s the last time you went someplace that didn’t have a dress code?”
Nico snorts, leaning against the kitchen workspace behind him. It’s early but he’s already in a suit, tie-less, but as put together as he always is. A coffee mug half finished, still lightly steaming in his hand while Ellie braids challah dough, her fingers flour-covered, the kitchen smelling like yeast and butter. “I don’t think most kids want their friend’s father tagging along on nights out.”
Ellie rolls her eye. “Kids. We’re in our twenties, Nico. And they actually don’t kn—” she pauses, catching herself, her chest tight as she glances at him. “I mean, they don’t exactly know who you are, so...”
He looks at her, Ellie holds his eyes for a beat before looking down, twisting the dough into a knot, tucking the ends, laying it out on the pan. “Have you told anyone about me?”
His ring catches the fluorescent lights in the kitchen, metallic, silver, a plain band. She looks away and back to the rhythm of the dough. Fold, twist, tighten, tuck.
“No,” he says. “Not yet.”
She nods and forces a smile. “Alright. So, we can just pretend it’s seniors night, then. Senior Social Night.”
His laugh, one of those head-tilting, chest-deep things, resounds through the kitchen; her grin matches, echoing like his laughter, you’re such a brat, Christ.
Her breath catches, heat spilling, quick and heavy through her belly. She ignores it; the dough beneath her fingers, fold, twist, tighten, tuck.
Marianne shows up as she’s egg-washing the last batch. Ah, Nico, she smiles, a kiss to each cheek, distracting my girl again, are you?
He looks at Ellie over Marianne’s head, and for a second, a blink, there’s something shadowed, something bitten back in him— but it’s gone in another blink and he smiles, picture-perfect, charming as ever.
I wouldn’t dream of it.
When he leaves, his hand touches the curve of Ellie’s lower back, just under the knot of her apron, his stubble soft when he ducks his head, his cologne warm, newly-familiar in her life, a little brush of his lips across her cheekbone, I’ll see you, sweetheart.
She’s one-point-five drinks in when he shows up; cranberry and vodka, a shot of tequila and lime, tongues out around the table, hauling in a breath before another suck of lime to chase the burn.
When she sees him, he’s watching her from across the bar. He’s in a black pea-coat, a head above the crowd. And she saw it, of course, those angles of him in her photos, this...sliver of a thing working its way under her skin like a splinter. A well-built man that didn’t quite blend into the label he carried. Something too purposeful in his body. A thing made to be used. His smile, rakish, boyish-charm, like an advertisement, a pretty package, a weapon meant to disarm.
And here that angle again, the way his eyes find hers, the age he carries-- the way he carries himself— something just under his skin, something in the shape of his shoulders, the shadow in his eyes...
Sometimes, she catches the edges of that something under his skin; his smiles come too easy, too picture-perfect when he’s talking to other people in his office. Different from the ones he gives to her. Sometimes, it’s an edge of hardness in his face when he takes work calls and slips through languages like water. English, French, Italian, Russian.
He’s nothing like Gatsby or Rochester or Darcy.
She grins and across the bar, he grins back. The dimpled one, the real one.
When she reaches him, it’s...instinct, greed, the burn of alcohol still sliding down her throat. A thing met in a mirror image, he bends, she reaches up, her hand curving over his nape. It’s stubble against her cheek, cologne in an inhale, his hand at her side, hot and big even through the drape of her sweater.
Sweetheart, he says in her ear as she chokes on a hi and her heartbeat.
She introduces him as Nico with his hand pressing wide-warm in her lower back. Nothing else, he’s just My friend, Nico-- and ignores the sharp tilt of Marcus’ eyebrows and the sharp of Mya’s heel kicking into her shin, her wide-eyed, who the fuck— you little liar—
He buys a round of drinks for the table, he brushes off questions about what he does, business, he says, and how they met, have you tried her focaccia? Puts my father’s to shame.
It’s New York, acquaintances and friendships are made without concern over age or origin or language, and her friends, alcohol-plied, do not ask how old he is, or comment when his arm stays warm, heavy around her back in the booth seat; a quiet edge of claim that makes her heart beat, quietly, off-kilter.
The street glows, lit by buzzing neon signs and the glow of still-open restaurants. Ginger, oyster sauce, metal, the sharp cold of October air at night. Their breath puffs in front of their faces; her nose frozen but her hand warm, wrapped around his and tucked into his pocket as they cross her street.
When they reach her apartment, it’s late, but a few hole-in-the-walls are still open for the last-call crowd, spilling light over the entrance way into the apartments above the strip of businesses along Baxter Street.
There’s laughter echoing from somewhere up ahead, dulled conversations behind the glass front windows of the noodle shop and the taco place next door, but Nico’s pulling open the door to her building and Ellie’s fumbling for her keys until he takes them, fingers warm and steady; third floor, she says, Unit 3A
Upstairs, it’s warm, still smelling like ginger and oil and garlic, but with the added mix of old building, dust, wood, cigarettes. It’s quiet in the hall, she’s that dizzy sort of drunk, tingly-fingered, buzzed, the good kind of spinny.
Nico is steady, decidedly not drunk, age and experience and about a foot and a half on you, sweetheart. Takes a lot more than that.
Next time, she says, and his lips quirk, yeah, we’ll see.
Inside, her roommates are asleep, it’s dark except for a dull light in the kitchen and the city-light spilling in from the narrow windows.
Nico steadies her as she plucks off her heels, she giggles, that too-loud, trying to be quiet sort of giggle, as he peels off her coat and his scarf from around her neck. I’ve got some girly drinks, do you want one?
Girly drinks. His grin is crooked but different from the photos she has, sure, baby.
Baby baby baby. The fridge sticks, a plasticky-shhick as she pulls it open, the yellow spill fills the dark; Nico peels off his coat as Ellie grabs two cans of spiked, white peach tea.
Baby slides through her like syrup.
He seems bigger in the dark. Bigger in her apartment. Like he takes up too much space in her thoughts, and her mind can’t wrap around the shape of him in reality. Or, she created him, a man torn out of her skull, too big to fit, fully-formed in girl-dreams and curiosities about the shape of a daddy.
In her room. Narrow, too small; she’s not ashamed of it, or embarrassed by the small shape of her life. She works for it, she likes it, it’s hers in making. Her apartment is clean, updated. Fake-wood floors, fresh white paint. The landlord is nice and lets her use an old utility closet on the fourth floor as a darkroom.
She watches him look, take in her space, the photos clipped to fairy-lights, the stacks of photos on the top of her drawers, the books on her shelves that carry the secret of him, like pressed flowers between the pages.
Her camera is on her night table and he’s-- she reaches for it, sinking back on her bed, a flick, twist of the lens, exposure-- and in the photo, she knows he’ll be lit by the soft golden glow of her fairy-lights, a man caught in a moment of things missed, a girl he can only know in photos; his fingers trailing over the edge of series from high school, Mya, Marcus and her, fourteen to eighteen.
He doesn’t seem surprised or bothered by the click, fwip of her camera. “You take all these?”
She hums and he looks at her as she fiddles with the exposure, thinking about a sharper photo, black and white, maybe, just him in her room, too big for it. Broad-shouldered, dark-haired. He’s thickly built in a known-unknown way; the lunches they’ve had when he peels off his suit jacket and it’s just a button-up. Rolled sleeves over veined forearms leading to scarred knuckles and calloused fingers she’s felt against her own.
And at the bar, she felt it at the bar, the hard angles, the weight of muscle in his side, under his arm, his thigh, thick against the thin of hers in black pantyhose.
And now, in her room, his forearms, veined, his fingers long, adjusting the fold of his pullover, a soft grey that shows off the body he has beneath those suits.
They’re good, he says, and Ellie shrugs, mom’s the photographer, it’s just a hobby for me, snapping another photo before shuffling back on the bed and patting the space next to her.
She’s wet, achy, a bellyful of heat. It doesn’t matter.
They talk for hours, did you have fun?— I did-- when’s the last time you were in a place like that, or this? I bet, never, right? Is my room the size of your closet?— A laugh. Too long, an easy, crooked grin and then, Sweetheart, I grew up in a place way worse than this.
He tells her, bits and pieces of his childhood in exchange for hers. Twenty-five years of things missed, things that should have been known. And when she yawns and says, stay the night, me and my friends crash after drinking all the time, no big deal— no big deal—
He does. Their heads on her pillow, blinking at each other in the dark, his fingers soft, along the baby hairs at her temple, slipping into her hair...until her eyelids get too heavy to keep open and his voice is rough with sleep and talk, his lips sliding over her forehead, go to sleep, baby.
He’s not a secret. He meets her roommates over the next few weeks; he’s polite, shakes their hands, but his age makes him other as much as his size does. Daylight doesn’t make him any less too-big in her space. Three twenty-something girls and one sometimes-on-off-boyfriend in a too-small space; three narrow rooms, two narrow bathrooms.
He doesn’t quite fit.
He comes with breakfast, brown bags of groceries, leaving things behind whenever they cook together. Wine they can’t afford. Good cheese. Fresh fruit and bagels and coffee.
He’s not a secret. He’s just— Nico, these are my roommates, Kara and Sumi. Guys, this is...Nico.
It does become a joke, no matter how many times she says, it’s not like that.
He’s Ellie’s daddy, Ellie’s old man, Ellie's sugar daddy, but there’s no judgment, no shame. He’s seventeen years older than her and there’s no hiding the reality of it, the cliche of it. Her: fatherless and pretty. Him: attractive and wealthy.
Him, taking care of her in all these small ways.
His smile is always crooked when he hears it, a joke, a joke, except for all the ways it isn’t.
Ellie’s daddy is here! Mya calls, sliding over to make room in a booth or on a couch while Ellie tries her best to not seem overeager to get up to meet him, to feel that slide of his hand in her lower back, holding her closer for just a second, the stubble on his jaw, his cologne, the quiet way he greets her every time; a stolen word, a hush of breath, sweetheart, baby, Ellie.
She says it sometimes, too. A joke over a phone call, morning, daddy. A bite of his food, a sip of his drink, a bag of groceries, crinkling between them, filled with things she won’t fully admit to wanting, thanks, daddy.
He’s not a secret.
They have moments where they try to do the right thing. Or maybe not the right thing because they haven’t done anything wrong. But an attempt to realign. Re-orientate. To un-smear the half-dried layers of their colours. To focus the lens, lower the aperture, sharpen the frame. Moments where she remembers who he is to her, who she is to him. Moments where the ring on his finger somehow means less than it should and, all at the same time, feels like the only thing keeping them apart.
But they have moments. Late nights, a movie, a drink, dinner, where she’ll walk him to the door from her bedroom or the couch and he’ll pull on his coat and she’s left in the threshold, a shiver, her back holding the door open.
Two people making the right choice, the good choice.
They'll linger there, like the goodbye she can't say, like the stale smell in the hall, a shape in her mouth on every inhale. A hum like the florescent lights above them.
But instead, with her heart in her throat she’ll say, do you want to stay?
And he’ll look at her, beneath the hum, with a ring, glinting on his finger...and peel off his coat, following her back inside.
It becomes a not-quite routine, him spending the night, sometimes it’s on accident, a late dinner, an early opening at the bakery, he keeps weird hours, long days at work, he says, business never ends, New York never sleeps—and it’s just easier for him to stay, since you’re already here, I don’t want to get up. It’s cold out, just stay. It’s late, don’t want you to get mugged Mister Armani—
But mostly, it’s on purpose, a thing not talked about, but known. Deliberate but silent, a quiet little wrong. A dinner out, the end of a meal, where they should go their separate ways but instead, her hand stays tucked in his, tucked in his coat pocket against the cold as they head back to her apartment, feet never faltering, no weak excuses for another drink, a coffee, tea? Do you want to come up for a bit?
She buys him a toothbrush. Her bed is too small.
He makes breakfast in the morning, eggs and toast, cereal and fruit, smoothies. They eat in the kitchen or in her too-small bed. It’s... easy, the forehead kisses, the hand-holding, being tucked between the heat of him and wall, waking up tangled beneath him or over him, the conversations that spill too late and leave them both yawning in the morning. Movie nights, in her apartment, in her room, just the glow of her laptop and fairy-lights.
He has things at her apartment. He barely fits in her bathroom or her bed. It’s weird, she knows it is.
He’s not a secret.
But she is.
His ring glints between them, on her pillow, against her cheek. Warm metal against her fingers.
They don’t talk about his wife.
Sometimes he comes over after a dinner he didn’t share with Ellie or his business partners, sometimes, he comes over freshly-showered. Sometimes she’s nearly sick with the thought of it.
Sometimes she wants to hurt him so badly, shove him right back out of her door and make him choose — but there’s nothing to choose, no decision to make. The paint smears and smears and she isn’t sure what colour it is anymore.
And, she thinks— she knows— it’s not his wife that matters. Not really.
It’s snowing out, he’s supposed to be at some charity event; his wife has called, her name glowing across the screen of his phone, face up on Ellie’s night-table, right next to her camera. Irina.
But her apartment smells like thyme, bay leaves, oregano; homemade chicken soup filled with carrots, celery, onions, thick-cut and hearty to chase the cold outside. They’d made it together, with Christmas songs on the radio filling the pockets in between their conversations and the schink of knives and boiling water.
She’s coming off a long three days of early mornings and late nights; an event catered. She’s tired, dressed in one of his pullovers he left here, and a pair of thick-knit socks and sleep-shorts. Three days and it feels like longer without him. A buzzing thing in her spine, an emptiness in the hollow of her chest and palm and mind.
It’s silly and stupid and childish— but by the press of his hand in her lower back, tighter than normal, pulling her up on her tip-toes against him, the rough exhale of baby when he’d finally, finally stepped into her apartment... she thinks it’s been the same for him.
With her chin on her knee, she sits against his side while he stretches out on his back on her bed, his hand resting, big and warm against her upper thigh, fingers just tucked under the loose cotton-edge of her shorts. The other flipping through latest photos she took, nothing special, she said, the same sort of thing she does all the time, the city in the rhythm of its changing tide, its people, her friends. Them.
His phone rings again and he reaches for it, flicking it from vibrate to silence. She doesn’t say, hey, you can go if you need to, because it’s been three days since she’s had more than a few texts, a phone call when she was half asleep already and if he wanted to be somewhere else, she knows he’d be there instead.
He’s an adult, the same as her.
They make choices.
It’s weird, she knows it is, this thing they’re doing. Not talking about it doesn’t change that her friends think they’re dating, or doing something like dating, the pre-dance of an entanglement. And they are, she thinks, entangled. Smearing together like light flares around the focus point of their relationship. Relation-ship.
Like a paint smear on the edge of a pallet knife, the layers of colours beneath, visible in the scrape.
She thinks about the photo of him in the rain. Of a photo she took on a timer a few weeks later, them in her room, just the two of them, her lights glowing, blurred gold like coins, the size of him behind her while he braided her hair before bed. It’s too out of focus to be a good photo, but she’s never cared about that. It’s a moment in time, something stolen from the tick of the clock, from the world outside.
He has that one on his cell phone. A photo of a photo because they both know he can’t take any home.
“Are you happy?”
He looks at her, his ring glints against the photos in his hand. She has other photos, too. Ones she shouldn’t have of him. Shirtless, damp from a shower. Half-dressed in her too-small room. The bulk of his biceps, flex of his stomach when he tugs off a shirt.
He has some, too. An album in his phone hidden behind a passcode only she knows. Her in his clothes in the morning. Bare-faced before bed. A blurry, dimpled grin, her face half-hidden in his neck, just the edge of a matching smile, the sharp of his jaw. Dressing to go for dinner, little back dress, pantyhose-less, leaning over the bathroom sink to put on mascara.
“With you,” he says as if it’s as simple as that. And maybe it is; a focal point to the blur of his life, the things they don’t talk about, the nebulous world he lives in when she’s not in it.
When he’s with her, he’s happy.
It isn’t lust that drives her, even though she spends her nights without him with her fingers buried in her cunt and sneaking, quietly-guilty images stuck like light streaks behind her eyelids, his skin, his body, him inside of her.
It isn’t desperation or hunger, some insurmountable need she can’t function around. She knows it’s weird and it’s wrong, these lines they’ve blurred already, all the shoulds and shouldn’ts of things decided by blood and bones and paternity tests. The wrongness is always there, a little pit in her gut, a thing so quiet and so loud, that sometimes, all they can do is look at each other in the dark. Like it’s the only place they belong, in the city-light glow from her window, behind a shut door, in a too-small bed where they're allowed to look at each other.
When she moves, shifting to her knees, his hand spreads on her thigh to steady her. Fatherly instinct, a little rough scrape of the calluses she knows he has along his palm and fingertips. When she straddles him, her inner thighs strain from the width of his lap, and she can feel his cock go hard, a heavy, thickening bulk against her cunt as his hands settle on her thighs, fingertips edging back under the little, loose hem like it’s where they belong.
It’s easy, but her heart still pounds, a liquid, electric heat spilling through her body, pooling, dripping, heavy inside of her.
He looks at her. Her heart beats, his cock throbs against the ache of her cunt as she feels the drip of her arousal, smearing against the seam of her shorts; damp, hot.
She pulls in a breath and flattens her palm over his heart, just to feel it, the echo of things between them resounding here, too.
Eyes, smile, dimples, heartbeat. Blood and bones and a test they didn’t need.
His fingers slip under the edge of her pullover, his pullover, too big and draping off her shoulder and down her arm. (A place he’s touched, the curve of her shoulder; kissed, the slope of her neck, his fingers brushing baby-hairs along her nape. Easy, almost absent-minded, a thing he should do, a thing he shouldn’t. Another blurred line.)
He touches her slowly until his palms are there, hot and wide on her sides; his thumbs stroking along the tense of her stomach and his fingers brushing along her spine.
He pulls the sweater up, she stretches, lifting her arms. Another blurred line: like a lover, baring skin. Like a little girl, arms up, being undressed.
Her cunt aches, leaking against the throb of his cock when her hips twitch. In his eyes, she sees it, looping like feedback, arms up, baby.
He drops the shirt over the edge of her bed; his hands coming up to smooth her hair, brushing it back, over her shoulders. More skin. More for him to see.
Her nipples peak more in the cold, his hands slide down her back to settle on her waist, thumbs stroking her hip bones, purposeful, to feel her skin and the shape of her. Reverent, almost. She’s always been small, too small, maybe, and under his hands and eyes, she feels even smaller.
She watches him look, a slow sink of his eyes, taking her in. Beneath her cunt, he’s thick and heavy and half her mind is too focused on it, blurs it into the dreams she’s had, the syrupy thoughts about his hands and his body and his mouth.
His body tenses just before he sits up, rolling them, laying her out beneath him. He looks down at her, weight-shifting; her legs loose around his hips, toes curling in her duvet. His fingers curling into the top of her sleep shorts.
His chest shifts with his breathing, just a shade too deep to be steady as his eyes sink, watching the curling of his fingers, every new little inch of bare skin beneath the drag of cotton.
He tugs her shorts down, Ellie lifts her legs, letting him pull them off before he’s knocking her knees wide.
He looks.
And looks.
It’s all he does for such a long moment she can feel the burn in her cheeks, the slow drip of her arousal, sliding out of her cunt, syrupy, thick, her insides clenching around nothing but hope and impatience.
He looks, and then, slides his hands, heart-lurching and cunt-clenching big, down the inside of her thighs, thumbs scraping over the sides of her cunt, that thin-skinned, burning-hot inner curve between cunt and thigh that’s all shiny, sticky-wet beneath his thumbs.
Baby, he says, and it’s rough, reverent, full of a weight that makes her insides burn; trembles her bones, fills her chest so tightly it hurts to breathe.
His thumb slides over her cunt, her thighs twitch, her tits quivering with a jolt of a gasp when he brushes her clit, when he drags the weight of the pad of his thumb over, around it, back down to sink, hook, just inside of her opening.
Fucking soaked, he groans and does it again, just to feel it, to see it. All that pretty-pink mess she knows she is for him.
Nico leans forward, bracing on his forearm next to her head, their lips brush but they don’t kiss, they share air, too hot, too close as he sinks a finger inside of her, as he works her open on the length of it. Just one; goes in dry and comes out slick and shiny. Sinks in again, knuckle deep. She doesn’t tell him she can take more, because his fingers are long and thick and it’s— it’s not even about that, not really.
His nose brushes her cheek, a soft press of his lips, his voice rolling, mean and loving. Just one, huh, baby? My pretty baby has a pretty baby cunt.
Its wrongness curdles in her stomach as much as it burns through her like lightning; a sick-edged thrill that makes her cunt clench around that knuckle-deep, working finger.
Her hand curls around his wrist, white-knuckled, bracing, anchoring. He kisses the burning-hot soft of her cheek, soft, loving, I’ve got you, baby.
One finger and then two, sinking deep, inching open. Easing out of her, soaked and sticky only to sink back inside all thick and smooth, again and again until it’s something cruel, a not-quite-enough thickness, that leaves her trembling, desperate, hips twitching to make him do more.
Greedy girl, he says and then, his fingers curl. Hook. Thick and long and perfect. Thumb rolling, slippery over her cunt, rubbing her clit, sliding stickily over it and working her quickly, relentlessly towards the edge because she’s gonna come for me, aren’t you, baby?
And she does, toes curling, too strung-tight by weeks of her own fantasies, too lost under the way his fingers curl and stretch to last long.
Good girl, he groans, just a little more— a little more— three fingers and her world blurs, tears on her lashes at the width of them, stuffed inside of her even drenched the way they are, even while his thumb still works, steady, heavy, incessant to bleed out the ache. She can’t stay quiet, her roommates are home, no one knows who he is, it’s all a joke—a fucking joke— but it feels— it feels-- she babbles, daddy, daddy—and his hand slides over her mouth, his breath hot over her cheekbone, into her ear, a rough laugh, that sounds more like she gutted him, shh, baby—you have to be quiet— back to two, curling, rubbing against that stomach-clenching, muscle-twitching spot inside of her. And, as the edge of another orgasm swallows her, a third finger tucks back in as she clenches around them, back arching, legs trembling, kicking out over the bed.
Distantly, his ring, slippery, hot, right against the clenching of her cunt, stretched around his fingers, trying to pull him deeper. He works them there, knuckle-deep, letting her drip and clench and tremble under him, around him.
He doesn’t undress, his belt clatters, digs into her ass, the back of her thigh; his hand shiny, heavy around a heavy cock that terrifies her as much as it makes her cunt clench around the idea of it. Thick, veined, angry-red. So heavy it falls over her cunt, burning hot like a brand, throbbing against the pinked-up mess of her, instead of standing, jutting up the way the cocks she’s had before have.
It’s a terrifying cock. It’s the cock that made her.
It’s sick how much she wants it.
Daddy, she hitches, watching it as he slides his cock over her, slicking himself up, the drag of his head, the veins on the length, the thickness of it, spreads her, rubs over her, inch by inch.
Their eyes meet, he slides his fingers through her cunt and strokes himself with her slick; tight-fisted, down and then up, twisting over the head—and then, his hand slides over her mouth, his thumb, over her lips, a rough stroke that smears spit over her lips and drags it over her cheek. Pre-cum, her own release, sweet and musky and sticky as she slides out her tongue and he drags his thumb over it. More pre-cum. She sucks the taste off the pad of his thumb.
His breath chokes out of him; his thighs shove under hers, her ass hauled in his lap before he leans forward again, the top of their heads bump against the wall behind her bed, folded up, tucked into a bed that’s too small for him, let alone both of them. His cock, there, heavy and hot half up onto her tummy.
Deep breath, baby.
She chokes on it. He grunts on the first push in, an inch, an inch and no more, his hand sliding back over her mouth, tightening over the sound that keens out of her. Her breath puffs through her nose, eyes clenching at the ache, the stretch, the burn of his cock nudging its way inside of her.
It’s nothing more than the fat head of it, and her toes curl, her belly tight with fear, anticipation, a cunt-throbbing need to be full.
It’s rough and hot and wrong and they both know it is, there’s no escaping from it, even behind a shut bedroom door. She thinks it makes it worse, the size of her bed, the glow of her lights, knowing they can be heard through the walls, sounds slipping under doors like a smell.
Short little rolls of his hips, working her open, sinking the fat length of him deeper and deeper until he’s in as far as he’ll go without shoving. Without hurting.
His hand slides off her mouth, his lips press, his breath hot and rough, right against the corner of her lips, over her cheek, Ellie, Ellie-- the hot leak of tears over her temples because it hurts, it does, there’s no escaping the ache of him inside of her, no breathing around the terrifying thick of him. Her cunt works at him, clenching, fluttering and it has to be impossible for him to not move, but he doesn’t. He kisses her jaw, her nose, the blotchy heat of her cheeks until the ache eases, just a little, just enough for the next hopeless clench of her cunt sends sparks through her stomach, a pooling heat between her hips.
She grips at him, his wrist, the heavy weight of his bicep, nails sunk deep, short, blunt, bled white.
Her hips twitch, a searching roll; his thumb hooks into her mouth, notching behind her teeth-- until he shifts closer, thighs thick and tensed beneath her body, nudging his cock deeper and his thumb slides out on her choked gasp, sliding wetly over her lips and cheek until his palm seals, hotly over her mouth, keeping the sound choked, muffled behind it.
Shh, relax, relax, baby, he says, low and rough and rumbling against her like a touch of its own. You have to be quiet., sweetheart.
It’s sick how much she likes it.
Her head presses harder against the wall, her legs tremble around his waist, and he fucks her like that, folded up beneath him, like a little doll he shoves into, a thing made to fit exactly under him, just enough room, or maybe, just less than enough, he says it, in her ear, my pretty fucking baby, come on-- you can take it, can’t you, pretty girl? A little more, c’mon—you have to learn how to take it. This little cunt was made for me, wasn’t it?
The world blurs in the wetness on her lashes, on the damp, wet heat of her breath puffing against his palm, against his wedding ring, burning hot against her lips--on his cock, spearing her open, nudging on every push in, as deep as he can go. It hurts, it hurts, but her toes curl, her thighs shake, and she thinks deeper, harder and don’t stop, don’t stop—with her nails scratching into his wrist and her cunt clenching around him, gripping the cock that made her, needy, still. Even bruised, even stuffed full.
She comes, sobbing behind his palm, cunt milking him, desperate for another shove in, to feel that nudge of his cock-head against her cervix, for that bright fucking second of being so full it hurts. He fucks her through it, her socked-feet bouncing, fucked-limp. His belt bruising into her thighs, leather and metal and his pants, soaked wet and sticky between their hips.
Nico groans, shoving deeper, harder, chasing the clench of her cunt, the pull of her body, his thighs tensing, tighter, closer, barely pulling back at all, like all he needs is for her cunt to be stuffed full, to stay as deep as he can get and just let her cunt work him, pull him over that last little edge--
Say it, he growls, say it--
She can’t, not beneath the bruise of his palm on her mouth, but it’s in her head, a litany, a psalm, daddydaddydaddy.
He comes, his cock gets thicker, harder—and she sobs beneath his hand, spit smearing over her lips and his palm, tears under his fingers as he groans, nudging deeper, deeper, right against her cervix, that pulse, twitch, sudden sticky-heat of his cum spilling inside of her.
He doesn’t pull out, not right away; he kisses the heat of her cheeks and eyes and lips. Her cunt hurts already, her inner thighs ache, bruised from the width of him pushing between them. His belt digging into the soft of her skin.
Her hands grip at him, knotting into his shirt, scraping over his back, sides, wrist. She feels too small, too young, too little— and like she’s found something she’s been missing her entire life. A piece of herself that’s been lost, finally found, finally tucked back inside of her body where it belongs.
She cries, heavy, gut-wrenching sobs she can’t stop, his voice soothing in her ear, against her cheek and temple and mouth. I love you, he says, I love you, but it’s just her name, just Ellie, baby, sweetheart.
It’s not new. He’s been saying it since the start.
After, he slips out of her room and comes back with a water bottle, Tylenol, a warm facecloth. He cleans her up, puts her back together beneath his hands and his mouth and his voice. His cum, smeared into the sticky-clear leak of hers, is a little pink on the facecloth when he gently, so gently wipes it between her legs, and he drops his head to her belly, an open-mouthed kiss, a rough exhale, an apology she doesn’t need.
She wishes she could take a photo of it, of him, this unneeded supplication, but she feels boneless, edge-less, a paint-smear of a girl, lost in the stroke of his body.
Instead, she drags her hand, limply over his head, threading her fingers into his hair like an absolution.
After, they have steaming, homemade chicken soup in mugs, fresh bread he brought for their breakfast tomorrow cut into slices, toasted, scraped with butter and topped with melted cheese. They eat with her roommates, standing in the kitchen; it’s normal. So normal. If anyone notices the limp in her step or the still-flushed tint to her cheeks or the way he touches her, quieter, softer like he’s afraid to let her get too far away from him... none of them say anything.
After, he bends her over the side of her low bed, their knees against the soft of the little white rug in front of it. Two fingers buried in her cunt, working deep, his voice a hush against her shoulder, the back of her neck, this is mine, baby, I made this, didn’t I?— three fingers even though she was just fucked-open, daddy’s tight little cunt, isn’t it?
And it hurts and she doesn’t care, urges him on when he says shouldn’t and bruised and you’re hurt, Ellie, c’mon— when she’d shut the door and leaned against it and just looked looked at him—
And now, the thick of his cock tears through her like a knife wound in her gut, but his fingers on her clit, his voice in her ear, shushing, relax baby, bite the blanket, makes her mind float, her teeth sinking into her duvet, muffling the pitch of voice, the sharp hitches in her breathing, the shape of daddy on her tongue.
He takes her hand, linking their fingers together against her stomach; spit and cum slick.
A kiss, hot and soft on her shoulder as he takes her down to her roots and remakes her.
He’s not a secret. Nothing changes. Though Mya notices a wince in her step, a hickey on her neck a week later and begs for details, but she’s quieted by Ellie’s headshake, the quiet no, because it’s hers, theirs, this thing they do behind shut doors.
He’s owed, he tells her, with his lips against her skin, the soft of her neck, collarbone, belly, cunt. Twenty-five years of not knowing her, and he takes it with interest on the slide of his tongue, on the edge of his teeth, on the roll of her hips against his mouth until she’s pink and puffy and pushing his head away and he’s all sharp grins and a mean mouth, telling her he’s not done yet, baby, you’ll take what I fucking give you, and feeds his cock into her, one thick, mind-wiping, body-unmaking inch at a time.
They don’t talk about her mother, but she knows, by that edge she catches in him sometimes, by the shadow in his eyes when he pushes inside of her and Ellie, baby, sweetheart slides like something ripped out of him, a bone, a rib, a thing stolen and only just given back, that there’s no forgiveness in him.
Things don’t change. They go for lunch, dinner, walks in Central Park with street vendor hot dogs or steaming coffee in the cold. His hand folded around hers, tucked into his pocket. They don’t make weak excuses for the nights he stays over, they don’t talk about his work, his life away from her. He brings groceries, treats, sneaking gifts he knows she won’t accept unless they’re for everyone and not just her. He doesn’t ask her to move, to let him buy her some place bigger, nicer, safer, because he knows she likes earning her life, in all its smallness.
This isn’t an affair.
It’s coming home.
She goes home to her mother for Christmas.
He goes home to his wife and family.
They fuck, angry, hungry, desperate with missing time, with all the things they don’t say, on the 28th, in a hotel he takes her to, stupid-expensive, private suite, uppermost floor. Just inside the door, skirt hiked up, ripped pantyhose, panties shoved aside, his belt clattering, leaving more bruises along her inner thighs as fucks into her against the wall.
He kisses, thumb-soothes her tears, the blotchy-heat of her face after, his I love yous are a stitch made of fingertips and lips and skin against skin, like a baby, his baby, he says, my pretty baby girl.
It slips out of him sometimes, the things he wants, in other ways. While he’s fucking into her, while he’s so deep she can’t breathe, while he’s holding her down and making her take him, and all she is is his— keep you like this—my good little girl— come home to you, waiting for me just like this— keep you fed on cock, fucked full, leaking my cum—
And God, it makes her sick how much she wants it. How hungry she is to be kept by him, kept like a child, like his child— they go to hotels more often as winter bleeds into spring, they both say it’s so she doesn’t have to be so quiet, so he can hear you cry for me— but it’s more for the way they get to be, the things they play at that blur the colours of their roles, thick paint, layered, still drying, all the things they are to each other.
A bath with pink bubbles, his cock sliding home after his fingers slip between her legs, here, baby? Does it feel good? Meals on his lap with his cock buried inside of her as she learns to breathe around it. Knee-highs she’s had for years that mean something else now; a slap to her inner thigh, a hard grip around an ankle. Sweet and dirty. Innocent and perverted.
Flipped skirts, cotton underwear, pinked-up ass cheeks. The way she says daddy in a voice that’s hers and not, all at once. The way daddy slips out of him, let daddy see, baby. Look at how wet you are, what were you thinking about?
In her apartment, in her life, they’re a couple. Her friends still tease them, daddy is a joke, a fucking joke and nothing more. Nothing changes. But behind closed doors, in hotel rooms, there are twenty-five years they’ve missed and she likes to be unmade by him; held down, fucked until it hurts, mind-emptied of everything but the pounding of his blood in her veins.
There’s twenty-five years of things that were missed. And they steal them back, twisted, blurred into something as wrong as it’s right. As truthful as it’s a lie.
Let Daddy in, baby, that’s it, take a breath for me. It only hurts for a minute, I’ll make you feel good, I promise.
Her name, Ellie, baby, sweetheart; I love you. I love you. I love you.
She burns through film, he has to buy a new memory card. They steal moments back, like little thieves in broad daylight, pick-pockets for the snap of a photo, for a bit of skin, a moment no one else can understand. His hand on her stomach, her thighs spread around his hips, angled just above where his cock stretches her, the dark line of hair above his cock. The flex of his bicep, the dark stubble of his jaw, bare skin she can’t get enough of, a constant hunger. Beneath her hands, her tongue, her mouth. The arch of her back, his hand on her nape, twisting into her hair, her mouth open, silent on a word no one but them will hear.
He doesn’t take the ring off, because the ring doesn’t fucking matter.
In May, he has business in Italy, a week, maybe a bit more. Come with me.
She says no at first, even though every bit of her is screaming yes. “I can’t,” she says. “I’ve got work. Rent. You know?”
But after dinner, in bed, as he slips inside of her, soft and slow and so familiar it hurts, his mouth slides over her cheek and he says, come with me, Ellie. Let me keep you naked in the sun for a week.
Come with me, please.
They go. He buys her one sundress, one bikini, she finds it in her suitcase when they land. A tiny, barely-there two-piece she laughs at, flushing as he kisses her cheek, hauling her up into his arms, his smile, his dimples, exactly the same as hers, his laughter rolling as he carries her to the bed, you don’t need much, I plan on you being naked for most of it. Cum-dripping and tanned, you know? I told you.
His cellphone fills up with pictures of her, naked, leaking, skin darkening, no tan lines. His thumb tucked into her, cum thick and white, dripping out. The slow crawl of freckles he falls in love with, baby, look at your face.
It’s perfect.
It’s a heartbreak.
She cries in the bathroom, gut-wrenching, curled on the floor alone when she gets back to her apartment, tanned, freckled, still leaking him from the morning when he’d slipped inside of her and the only thing it could be called was love-making.
In June, she helps a friend of a friend take photos of a wedding for a little extra cash and why not, Ellie, you’re good, really good. And they want different kinds of photos, artsy shit, you know? I’ll pay you under the table.
He’s there.
(And not. He’s the man through her lens again, across the street. Wrong-shaped smiles. Picture-perfect. Charming in all the ways she knows he isn’t. If they only knew the shit that came out of his fucking mouth when he’s inside of her.)
But he’s there, through her lens, across the room. His wife’s hand tucked into his as they mingle with friends. His life comes slamming into focus like a gut punch. Like a sharpening focus, the snap of a shutter.
When he sees her, his face doesn’t change but she sees it, the hunger and anger and devastation in his eyes.
She doesn’t leave. She’s an adult. So is he.
They make choices.
At the reception, he slips away from his wife. She’s beautiful, his age, dark-haired, red-lipped, the exact sort of woman Ellie imagines a man like him should have.
Down the hall, her kitten-heels click, the noise and music of the wedding fades behind a heavy door. Another hall, his leather shoes echo in the wake of hers, rebounding.
A washroom, he follows her inside, the door thuds shut; it’s cold, flowery-smelling. He looks at her, she looks back, her jaw tight. Everything between them eats away at the space between them, at them, like little teeth in the meat of their bodies.
It’s going to hurt, she knows it is. No time to soften the ache of his size, no time to stretch her, lick her open. No soft words or perversions to get her soaking.
She sees him debate it. A split-second hesitation. Daddy loves her, but it’s a sick thing.
The kiss is like a fight, a scream, knock-out, drag-down desperation. Clawing for the right to live.
Bent over the sink, the mirror hides nothing. His hand on her throat, his snarl in her ear, her skirt, rucked up over her stomach, their eyes locked in the reflection as he fucks his way inside of her, cock too deep, too rough, too perfect.
It hurts in so many fucking ways.
Sick in love, they call it, but it feels more like a consumption. Mutual destruction wrapped in love. Cannibalistic, taking bites out of each other, mouthfuls at a time, one inside the other inside the other inside the other.
In July, the edges of the other thing she used to see in him swell in his angles like clinging shadows. His smiles around other people are too picture-perfect, too pre-packaged. His tension, shape, the shift of his shoulders and bulk of his arms, like a smear of dark paint at his edges. He’s rough. She takes everything he gives her and it feeds her own hunger, her own darkness like an insatiable animal in her gut. Every rough shove, every too deep fuck that leaves her bruised or leaking a pink-smear of his cum down her thigh, every time he curls his hand over her mouth and makes her take it— she gets hungrier, a looping-feedback, mirror-images that keep rebounding, reflecting and distorting each other.
In July, in her bed, with his cum smeared between her thighs, he says:
“Irina wants to start a family.”
He’s forty-three. She’s twenty-six.
They got married for a reason, he says. Family name, business. Expectations.
Kids.
His wife isn’t stupid. She knows there's someone else. He hasn’t fucked her in months, he says, not since that night in November. She’s not a stupid woman.
His wife knows enough, that Ellie’s young, a girl, (she can see the curl of a red-lip, some little slut you’re running around with—) but she thinks it’s sex and nothing more, that he’s out having fun, a man of certain lifestyle, appearance, wealth—used to life as a bachelor— used to getting his dick wet—
And she can see the anger in him, a seething, low thing; the same thing he’s been carrying all month.
Ellie wonders if his wife ever saw the difference in him, the change in his smiles, the shift of weight in his shoulders between October and now. If she ever thought of the possibility that Nico wasn’t leaving her and his life, but going home.
To Ellie.
To a stolen life. A stolen home. Taking back what’s owed to him, what’s owed to them, one second at a time.
He sits, half-dressed, leaning against the wall behind her bed. His eyes close and he pushes out a breath. “I can’t keep doing this.”
For a second, just a second, she thinks, this is it.
But then, her brain and her heart and her body kicks in and it says no, no, don’t be fucking stupid.
They made thier choice months ago.
Nico drags a hand over his jaw, pushes it through his hair. “You have to make the choice, Ellie. I can’t— ” he sinks down, rolling over her, his mouth scraping over her cheek and jaw, his hand spreading hot, cupping her face. His voice wrecked. “Baby, I can’t fucking do this anymore. You have to choose.”
I can’t keep leaving you.
You have to choose.
Me, or your mother.
She’s known it all along. This choice he hadn’t ever wanted her to make. Keeping his wife was almost a kindness. It gave her an excuse to avoid the truth. Let him take the blame for something keeping them apart.
She loves him and hates him for it.
In October, as the leaves change, as things come full circle, Ellie signs her name under Nico’s on a penthouse on the Upper East Side. Her friends help her move. She meets Nico’s brother, who laughs when he hugs her and calls her little homewrecker and asks just how pussy-whipped Nico is, c’mon, you can tell me!
It’s funny and true. He brings girly-drinks and weed; she likes him a lot. He won’t ever know that she’s his niece.
When everyone leaves, and Ellie’s girly-drink-tipsy and Nico is still, still steady no matter how much she tries to get him drunk, she sinks onto his cock on the balcony under the New York skyline, working herself open, one inch at a time. He kisses her hot cheeks, the tears clinging to her lashes... his palm warm, big, on the barely-there curve of her lower belly, his voice low, reverent, the same as it’s been since the start, Ellie, baby, sweetheart.
I love you, I love you, I love you.