Chapter 4: Fingers In My Hole

SERAPHINA

I can’t sleep.

I’ve been lying here for hours, staring at the ceiling of my guest bedroom, listening to the house settle around me. Listening to the sound of Dominic and Elena’s bedroom door closing. The water running in their bathroom. The creak of their bed as he climbs in beside her.

Every sound is a knife.

My body is still humming from what almost happened in the kitchen. Still aching. Still unfinished.

He left me on that counter, desperate and wanting, my release so close I could taste it. Then Elena’s voice shattered everything, and he pulled away like I’d burned him. Left me there trembling and incomplete while he went upstairs to play the devoted husband.

To her.

I kick off the covers, suddenly too hot despite the air conditioning. The white sheets tangle around my legs as I shift restlessly, and the cool cotton against my overheated skin is almost painful. Almost a tease in itself.

I need to finish what he started.

My hand slides down my stomach, fingers trailing over the same path his mouth took hours ago. I can still feel the ghost of his touch—his fingers inside me, his tongue working my clit and fucking into me with devastating precision, his command to hold still while he took me apart.

“You come when I say you can.”

But he never said I could. Never gave me permission. Left me aching and empty and so goddamn frustrated I want to scream.

I part my thighs, letting the cool air hit my heated skin. My sleep shorts are already damp—have been since I came upstairs, since I stood in the shower trying to wash away the evidence of what we did and only succeeded in making myself want him more.

This is pathetic. I’m pathetic.

Twenty-one years old, lying in my sister’s guest room, touching myself while thinking about her husband who’s currently in bed with her one floor above me.

I should feel guilty.

I don’t.

I feel frustrated. Desperate. Aching in a way that has nothing to do with conscience and everything to do with the throbbing need between my legs.

My fingers find the edge of my sleep shorts, and I slip beneath them. No panties—I couldn’t stand the fabric against my sensitive skin after my shower. Just bare, heated flesh that’s been crying out for attention since Dominic pulled away.

I close my eyes and let myself imagine.

Imagine his hands instead of mine. His fingers sliding through the wetness there, teasing like he did in the kitchen. His voice in my ear, low and commanding: “Touch yourself for me, baby girl. Show daddy how desperate you are.”

A soft moan escapes before I can stop it, and I bite down hard on my lip to stay quiet.

I slide two fingers along my slit, gathering the wetness there. So wet it’s almost embarrassing.

My back arches off the bed as I circle my clit, the touch sending sparks through my nerve endings. Too sensitive. Still so worked up from earlier that even my own touch feels like too much and not enough all at once.

I’ve been doing this since I was young—touching myself, learning exactly what my body needs. I know every angle, every pressure point, every rhythm that works. I’m good at this. Efficient. I can get myself off in minutes when I want to.

But tonight, it’s not enough.

My fingers aren’t thick enough, long enough, skilled enough. They’re not his. They don’t come with that commanding voice telling me when I’m allowed to come. Don’t come with the weight of his body between my legs, the scratch of his stubble against my inner thighs, the heat of his breath on my most sensitive skin.

I press deeper, adding a third finger, trying to recreate the stretch of him inside me. My hips lift off the bed, chasing the sensation, and the sheets slide against my bare legs in a way that makes me shiver.

“That’s it,” I imagine him saying. “Fuck yourself on your fingers. Show me how much you need it.”

My other hand slides up to cup my breast through my thin tank top, thumb brushing over my nipple until it hardens into a painful point. He touched me there too, in the kitchen. Palmed my breasts like he was weighing them, testing their fullness, claiming ownership.

“Everything you see belongs to me,” he’d said.

And god help me, I want it to be true.

I want to belong to him. Want to be his in ways that have nothing to do with morality or decency or the fact that he’s married to my sister.

My fingers work faster now, chasing the release that’s been building since this afternoon. Since he poured scotch on my stomach and licked it off. Since he pushed his fingers inside me and told me I could only come when he gave permission.

Permission he never gave.

Bastard.

But even as I think it, heat floods through me. Because that’s part of what makes this so intense—the control he has. The way he can bring me to the edge and hold me there. The way he can make me beg and then deny me and somehow that denial makes me want him even more.

My breath comes faster, shorter. I’m close. So close.

I curl my fingers, searching for that spot he found so easily. The one that made me see stars. Made me forget everything except the feeling of him touching me, owning me, taking me apart with surgical precision.

There.

My hips jerk off the bed, a gasp escaping before I can muffle it. I press my face into the pillow, biting down on the fabric to stay quiet as I fuck myself harder.

In my mind, it’s not my hand. It’s him. He’s here in my bed, between my legs, his fingers deep inside me while his thumb circles my clit. His mouth is at my ear, voice rough with desire.

“That’s my good girl. So wet for me. So desperate. You’ve been thinking about this all night, haven’t you? Thinking about daddy’s fingers inside you. About what would have happened if we hadn’t been interrupted.”

Yes. God, yes.

“Tell me what you want,” his imagined voice commands. “Tell daddy what you need.”

“You,” I whisper into the pillow, my voice barely audible. “I need you. Please. Please, daddy, I need—”

The orgasm hits without warning, crashing over me in waves that make my whole body shake. More wetness spills out with each thrust of my fingers. I bite down harder on the pillow, muffling the cry that tears from my throat as pleasure floods through me. My inner walls clench around my fingers, hips jerking with each pulse of release.

It goes on and on, my body wringing every last bit of pleasure from the climax I’ve been denied for hours.

When it finally subsides, I collapse back onto the bed, boneless and spent. My fingers are still inside me, coated in evidence of my release. My breath comes in ragged gasps that slowly even out into something resembling normal.

But even now, even after coming so hard I saw stars, there’s still an emptiness.

Because it wasn’t him.

It was just me, alone in my bed, getting myself off while thinking about my sister’s husband.

The guilt tries to creep in now, in the aftermath. Tries to make me feel something other than satisfied.

It fails.

I pull my fingers out slowly, feeling the aftershocks pulse through me. Bring them to my lips without thinking and taste myself there—salt and musk and the evidence of what Dominic Ashcroft does to me without even being in the room.

I lie there for a moment longer, savoring the afterglow. Then I hear footsteps upstairs. The soft murmur of voices.

They’re awake.

Elena must be feeling well enough to come down for dinner after all. Which means I need to pull myself together and go pretend to be the devoted sister who’s definitely not obsessed with her brother-in-law.

I drag myself out of bed and head to the bathroom, washing my hands and splashing cold water on my face. My reflection stares back at me—flushed cheeks, swollen lips from biting down, eyes still dark with lingering arousal.

I change quickly, pulling on a simple sundress—yellow, cheerful, innocent. The kind of thing the good sister would wear to a family dinner. I run a brush through my blonde hair, letting it fall in soft waves around my face. A touch of lip gloss. Nothing more.

Perfect.