Forbidden Embers

Chapter 7: The Bartender's Claim

The bleach rag was coarse in her hand, the chemical smell burning her nostrils as she wiped the slick, cooling evidence of Marcus from her stomach and thighs. Her skin felt feverish, oversensitive. Every movement caused a fresh, aching reminder between her legs. She stepped into her panties, the silk now a torn, useless scrap, and smoothed the wrinkled dress down over her hips. The fabric felt alien against her skin, a thin barrier separating her from what had just happened.

She took a slow breath, trying to anchor herself in the mundane: the dust motes dancing in the lamplight, the water stain on the ceiling tile. It was just a body. Just a series of chemical reactions. The thought was hollow, brittle.

Her hand closed around the cold, greasy brass of the doorknob. She turned it, pulled.

The door didn’t move. It was pushed inward, hard.

Derek filled the doorway. The easy charm he’d worn at the bar was utterly gone, stripped away to reveal something harder, sharper beneath. His gym-honed body was taut with tension, his jaw a clenched line. His eyes, usually sparkling with calculated mischief, blazed with a raw, proprietary fury.

“I saw you leave with him,” he snarled, the words low and venomous. He didn’t ask. He knew.

He stepped forward, forcing her back into the room. The door clicked shut behind him. The space, still thick with the smell of s*x, seemed to shrink further.

“Derek, it’s not—”

“Shut up.” He closed the distance in two strides. His hands shot out, grabbing her shoulders, spinning her around, and shoving her forward. Her palms slammed onto the same metal desk, still warm from her weight. “You think you can just slut around on me? We had a thing. We had an understanding.”

His hand fisted in the back of her dress, yanking the fabric up to her waist in one brutal jerk. The cool air hit her skin again. She felt exposed, more vulnerable now than she had with Marcus. This wasn’t desire; it was punishment.

A beat of silence. Then a sharp, involuntary intake of breath from behind her.

He’d seen it. The glistening, pearlescent trail of Marcus’s come, not fully wiped away, smeared high on her inner thigh. The blatant, physical proof.

“Jesus Christ,” Derek breathed. The anger in his voice twisted, warped by a sudden, dark current of arousal. “f**k. Look at you. You’re f*****g filthy.”

His touch changed. His palm, previously meant to shove, now slid over the curve of her ass, possessive and rough. A thumb traced the wetness on her thigh, collecting it. She heard the wet sound as he brought his fingers to his own mouth, a grunt of stark hunger.

The metallic rasp of his belt buckle cut through the quiet. The zip of his fly. She braced herself, muscles locking.

He didn’t guide himself. He just positioned the thick, veiny head of his c**k at her entrance, which was still swollen and slick from Marcus, from her own orgasm, from everything. He pushed.

There was no slow stretch this time. He was inside her in one furious, claiming drive. The fullness was shocking, a different kind of invasion. He was angled differently, hitting a place that made her gasp, a sound that was equal parts pain and electric shock.

“This,” he growled, his body slamming against hers, forcing a choked cry from her throat. “This is my p***y now. You understand? Mine.”

He set a brutal, punishing rhythm. It was nothing like Marcus’s controlled power or Caleb’s games. This was pure, unadulterated possession, each piston-like thrust a reiteration of his words. Mine. Mine. Mine. The desk screeched across the linoleum with every drive. A whiskey bottle on the edge tottered and fell, shattering on the floor, the smell of cheap bourbon exploding into the air to mix with sweat and s*x.

One of his hands knotted in her hair, pulling her head back. The other slid around her hip, his fingers finding her c**t with a practiced, ruthless precision. He rubbed in hard, abrasive circles, the stimulation too much, too sharp.

“You like being this dirty?” he hissed in her ear, his breath hot. “Having two different loads in you in ten minutes? You’re a f*****g mess. Come on. Come on this c**k. Show me you know who owns it.”

Her body, traitorous and overwhelmed, betrayed her. The rough, unforgiving pressure of his fingers, the deep, aggressive penetration, the sheer degradation of it all coiled into a tense, impossible wire inside her. It snapped. A fractured, splintering orgasm ripped through her, tearing a ragged scream from her lungs. It was not pleasure. It was a systemic collapse, a wave of convulsions that milked his driving length as she shook against the desk.

Feeling her internal muscles clamp and spasm around him sent Derek over the edge. With a final, guttural roar, he buried himself to the hilt and held. She felt the hot, pulsing jets of his release flooding into her, a second claim mixing with the first inside her already-sore channel. He grunted, thrusting shallowly through his climax, pumping every last drop into her.

He stayed there for a long moment, his weight heavy on her back, his breathing harsh in her ear. Slowly, he softened and slid out. A slow, warm trickle of combined fluids followed immediately, dripping down her thighs.

He stepped back, tucking himself away. The silence returned, now charged with a different kind of violence—the aftermath. Eva didn’t move. She stared at the graffiti scratched into the metal desk, her vision blurry.

“Clean yourself up,” Derek said, his voice flat, the anger spent, leaving something colder in its wake. “You look like you’ve been through a war.”

He turned and left, the door swinging shut behind him with a soft, final sigh.

Eva pushed herself upright. Her legs trembled violently. She looked down. Her dress was ruined, twisted and stained. The evidence of both men was on her skin, inside her. The bleach rag lay on the floor by her feet. She didn’t pick it up.

She walked out of the office, down the corridor, and through the nearly empty bar. She felt eyes on her—Marcus’s calm, knowing gaze from behind the bar, Derek’s simmering stare from a shadowed booth. She didn’t look at either of them.

The night air outside was a shock, clean and cold. She leaned against the brick wall of the alley, the very spot where it had started with Marcus, and vomited into the gutter. Nothing came up but bile and the taste of whiskey and shame.

She fumbled in her clutch for her phone. The screen blazed to life. A new notification from the app glowed in the dark.

New Match: “Observer.” Profile is blank. Message: “I saw everything. Let’s talk.”

A dry, soundless sob shook her frame. She slid down the wall until she was sitting on the damp pavement, the phone’s light illuminating the tears that finally, silently, began to fall.