CHAPTER 4 - IN THE DRIVER'S SEAT

SYLVANA

The screen went dark and I set the phone down beside me, the last of its glow fading until there was nothing left in the room but a soft gray hush and the sound of my own breathing. My body was still wound tight, still slick and swollen and empty, and I told myself I could be patient — that the hours between now and the moment I saw him again were nothing, that I knew how to wait. I was lying. I had never once known how to wait for anything Julian gave me, and he had made very sure of it.

So I reached for the dildo one final time and worked it slow and unhurried, in and out, until the sharpest edge of the ache dulled into something heavier and warmer, something I could carry with me. Only then did I let myself go still. I turned off the lamp and pulled the blanket up to my chin, and beneath me the house settled into its night sounds — the tick of the radiator, my mother's jazz still murmuring up through the floorboards — and I let all of it rock me down into the dark.

Sleep came in pieces, but it came.

I dreamed of him, which was unfair. In the dream he was in his office with the door locked and his shirt sleeves rolled, and he was saying my name the way he said it in real life, low and deliberate, like it meant something he hadn't decided to admit yet. When I woke, the dream was already dissolving and my body was already reaching for the memory to replace it.

I woke before my alarm, which almost never happened, my body awake and restless in a way it had never been before him. The memory of the library reached me before I was even fully conscious — his fingers curling inside me, his teeth at my ear, the wet sound of him pulling free and licking his hand clean — and my own hand slipped between my thighs before I had opened my eyes.

Wet. Still wet.

"Of course," I whispered to the ceiling, and laughed at myself.

I showered and dressed and thought about him the whole time: what he would be wearing, what he would do the second he saw me, whether he had listened to my recording more than once, whether he had touched himself to the sound of my voice. That last thought made my stomach flip and my hands clumsy. I chose my clothes with a kind of deliberate cruelty — a soft sweater, a short plaid skirt, dark tights. Nothing that screamed. Everything that whispered.

Downstairs, my mother was at the kitchen table with coffee and a newspaper she clearly wasn't reading.

"You're up early," she said, and there it was again, that lightness in her voice that still didn't fit her, like a dress she was trying on in front of a mirror. "Big day?"

"Just school."

"Mm." She sipped her coffee and watched me over the rim. "You've been different lately, Sylvana. Lighter. Happier." A pause, and then, careful: "Is there a boy?"

I grabbed a piece of toast so I wouldn't have to answer right away. "Maybe."

"You'll tell me when you're ready."

"When I'm ready," I agreed, and kissed her cheek, and escaped out the front door before she could ask me anything else.

The morning air was cold and clean and did absolutely nothing to cool me down. I walked the six blocks to campus with my earbuds in and my mind anywhere but here, and halfway there my phone buzzed against my thigh.

*Julian: [Parking lot behind the arts building. Ten minutes.]

No greeting. No explanation. Just the where and the when, as if he had already decided everything and only needed me to arrive.

Then I texted him back: [I'm walking.]

*Julian: [Walk faster.]

I shrugged as I picked up pace and walked faster than before.

By the time I reached the arts building my heart was going harder than the walk could account for. The lot behind it was half empty at that hour — a few faculty cars, a pair of delivery vans, frost still silvering the windshields — and I was still scanning for him when a hand closed around my wrist and pulled.

I barely had time to yelp before Julian had me pressed against the side of a car, his body a wall of heat against the cold, his mouth already at my temple. "Good morning."

"You scared me."

"You were late."

"I was not —"

He cut me off with a kissed, hard and quick, and the protest died in my throat. Then he was reaching past me to open the back door, one hand flat against my lower back, steering me in without a word. I climbed into the seat and he followed right after, pulling the door shut and sealing us both inside.

The car was warm from the heater he'd left running, the windows already fogging slowly at the corners. Julian settled onto the seat beside me and looked at me for a long moment, and there was something in his face that was almost reverent and something that was anything but.

"You sent me a recording," he said.

"You replied with one word."

"Lovely." A slow smile — the first real one I had ever seen on him — spread across his mouth. "It was. I listened to it four times. In my office. With the door locked."

My face went hot. "Four?"

"Three and a half before I had to stop and do something about it." He reached over and tucked a strand of hair behind my ear, and the small tenderness of it undid me more than anything rough ever could. "You have a filthy mouth, Sylvana."

"You bring it out of me."

"I intend to keep bringing it out of you." His thumb traced my jaw, tilting my face up. "Now tell me. On that recording. What were you doing when you said you were mine?"

"Touching myself," I said, and my voice barely wobbled. "Thinking about your fingers."

"Which fingers?"

"Yours. Inside me. The way you curl them."

"And what did you use, since you didn't have me?"

"A toy." I swallowed. "Thick. Not you."

"Nothing is me." He said it like a fact, flat and certain, and it should have sounded arrogant and instead it just sounded true. "Did you cum?"

"No. I stopped. I wanted to wait for you."

Something shifted in his face at that — a flicker, quickly buried. "Good girl," he said, quieter than before, and then his hand slid up under my skirt and found my clit.

"Here?" I glanced through the fogging glass, at the thin traffic of students drifting past the far end of the lot. "Julian, people could —"

"People could," he agreed, and pulled me across the seat and onto his lap.

I went willingly, my knees bracketing his hips, my skirt riding up around my thighs. His hands found the bare skin there immediately and slid up, gripping, and when they met no resistance at all he made a low sound deep in his chest.

"No underwear," he said.

"I didn't see the point."

"Good girl." He kissed my throat, dragging his teeth down the tendon until I shivered. "Lift up."

I lifted, and he worked his belt open, the rasp of the zipper loud in the small space, and then his cock was free and hot against my thigh and I had to bite my lip to keep from moaning at the sight of it alone. He stroked himself once, twice, watching my face the entire time, and then guided me down.

The stretch of him was slow and full and perfect, and we both groaned into each other's mouths as I sank all the way to the base.

"Quiet," he warned against my lips. "The lot isn't empty."

"Then stop making me loud."

"Impossible."

He gripped my hips and started to move me, slow and deep, guiding the rhythm with his hands. Every roll of my hips ground my clit against him and every time I came down he pushed up to meet me, and within a minute I was shaking, my fingers knotted in his collar, my forehead pressed hard to his.

"Julian," I whispered.

"Again."

"Julian."

"Again."

His hands slid down to my ass and took control, and the pace turned harder and far less careful. The car rocked faintly with every thrust. Through the fogged windows the whole world had gone soft and blurred, and it felt like we were the only two people left alive.

"How long," he rasped, "have you been thinking about this."

"Since the second I left you."

"Since the second I saw you in that skirt," he shot back, "I've been thinking about bending you over my desk."

"Do it."

"Not today. Today is this." He pulled my mouth back to his, swallowing the sounds I couldn't hold in, and drove up into me until my vision started to fray at the edges.

I was close — so close, the pressure coiling tight and low and desperate — when a sharp knock cracked against the window behind my shoulder.

Julian went still.

"Don't move," he breathed, hips frozen deep inside me, fingers tightening on my thighs. "Don't say a word."

Through the fogged glass, A face pressed close, peering in. Then a hand wiped a clean streak through the condensation and a pair of eyes found us in the dark — and then a slow, knowing smile…A woman.

"Shit," Julian whispered against my hair, and he didn't move an inch, as if staying buried inside me might somehow make us invisible.

I watched her mouth two syllables through the glass. His name…but she didn't walk away.