Forbidden: The Athens Night

I take her to Athens.

There is still a week of Yannis to finish, and I work it from the legal arm by day. This time I do not leave her on an island and miss her by the length of an afternoon. This time she is in the car when it crosses the city at dusk. She is on the stairs ahead of me when we climb to the flat in Plaka. Eleni stayed back on Kalydon with the cousins.

Callie knows this flat. She was here once, while I was away in an office and did not know she had come. The chair she pulled out that day is still pulled out. I reach to push it in, then leave it where her hands left it.

"You sat here," I say. "I came here and found this. I knew it was you. I have never been so angry at a chair in my life."

She laughs. It is the first time I have heard her laugh in this city, and it undoes something the boardroom could not.

She goes to the window, where the old quarter is going gold below us. I come up behind her and set my hands on her hips. She leans back into me.

"Theron."

"Koúkla mou."

I lift the hair off the back of her neck and put my mouth there, at the knob of bone where the chain will sit in two weeks. She makes a sound, raw and needy, and I turn her around.

There is no folder between us now. No proxy, no name signed away in the dark. There is only this.

I kiss her the way I did not let myself in her bed the first time, when guilt still had its hand on me. I kiss her like a man with nothing left to confess, deep, filthy, tongue stroking into her mouth like I already own her. She opens for me, moaning into it, her fingers in my shirt, then on the buttons, tearing them open with the patience gone out of her.

"Bedroom?" I say against her mouth.

"No." She has my belt, yanking it free. "Here. The window. I want the city to watch me get fucked by you."

So I lift her, set her on the wide sill, step between her knees. I drag the linen off her shoulders and down, baring her breasts to the night air. I put my mouth to one tight nipple, sucking hard, then softer, then hard again. She arches into it with a gasp, one hand flat on the cold glass behind her, the other fisted in my hair, holding me where she needs me.

I learn the sharp cry she makes when I suckle gently, and the filthy, desperate whimper when I bite and tug. I do not count them. I have counted my way through every hard thing in my life and I do not count this.

I go to my knees on the floor. I push her thighs wide, set her on the very edge of the sill, and put my mouth on her cunt. She's soaked already, slick and hot against my tongue. I lick through her folds, tasting her, then seal my lips around her swollen clit and suck. She says my name once, ragged and broken, then stops saying anything that is a word. Her thighs clamp around my ears. I open them with my hands, spread her wider, and keep her open. I do not hurry. For the first time there is nowhere I have to be but here, tongue fucking into her dripping hole, sucking her clit, two fingers buried deep and curling until she breaks against my mouth, her hand fisted in my hair hard enough to hurt, the city gold and indifferent at her back.

She pulls me up by the hair before I am finished, which I take as an order.

"Now you," she says, voice wrecked.

She gets me out of the rest of it. My cock springs free, heavy and aching. She wraps her hand around the thick shaft, strokes once, twice, then leans in and takes me into her mouth. I brace a palm on the window frame and let her. She sucks me deep, tongue swirling under the head, throat working around me as she bobs. I watch her lips stretch around my cock, spit shining on her chin. She has told me twice tonight what she wants. I am done deciding things for her. I last longer than I want to and not as long as I mean to. When I cannot let her finish it that way, I lift her off me.

"Calliope."

"Yes."

I take her there, on the sill, the window at her back, the city below. The first push is slow. I feed my cock into her tight, slick cunt inch by inch. She is so fucking wet and hot inside, clenching around me. Her breath leaves her in a sharp, stunned cry that stops me for half a second.

"All right?"

"Don't stop. Fuck me."

So I do not stop. I grip her hips hard enough to bruise and drive into her. She meets every thrust, legs wrapped around my waist, heels digging into my back. We find the rhythm together, the oldest two there is. Deep, filthy strokes. In, back. In, back. My cock sliding wetly out of her, then slamming home again, balls slapping against her ass. The sound of it is obscene, skin on skin, her slick coating me, dripping down my shaft.

I feel her go again before I do, cunt pulsing and fluttering around my cock, milking me as she comes with a long, broken moan I will keep for the rest of my life. The squeeze of her is too much. I bury myself to the hilt and follow her over, spilling deep inside her in thick, endless pulses, hips grinding against her as I empty everything I have.

"Koúkla mou." I have it against her hair. "Eísai dikí mou." You are mine.

"Eímai dikí sou," she says back, I am yours, which is more than I asked for, which is everything.

After, we stay where we are, her legs still around me, the cold glass fogged where her back has been against it. My mother's clock ticks in the hall. I do not count with it. I have nowhere to be but here, and a woman in my arms who came to this flat once when I was not in it, and came back when I was.