Bed

I locked the door and lay down on my side of the bed, the sheets still carrying the cold distance that had lived between Ben and me for months. The mark Constance had left on my breast throbbed in time with the anger that refused to cool. Every time I closed my eyes I saw Ben’s face against the music-room wall - flushed, stunned, still half-hard - while my own voice tore into him. The taste of him lingered on my tongue like a betrayal I had volunteered for.

The house was not quiet.

Floorboards creaked in a slow, deliberate pattern somewhere below. Not Ben’s heavy tread. Something lighter. Patient. I stared at the ceiling and dared it to come closer, the same way I had dared Constance earlier. The anger was still there, sharp and useful, but underneath it the earlier heat had not died. It simply waited, coiled low in my belly, fed by the memory of fingers that were not my husband’s and a mouth that had taken him anyway.

I rolled onto my back. The nightgown clung to the places that were still damp. My hand drifted down without permission, resting on the soft curve of my stomach, then lower. I hated myself for it. I hated the house more. Yet when my fingers slipped between my thighs they found me already slick again - slick from Constance, from Ben, from the bitter, furious need that the fight had only sharpened.

I touched myself the way I imagined the house wanted me to: slow at first, almost clinical, then harder, two fingers pushing deep while my thumb circled the swollen bud that still pulsed with leftover sensation. The wet sounds were quiet but unmistakable in the locked room. I bit my lip to keep from making noise, eyes open, watching the dark ceiling as if it might answer.

Ben’s voice from earlier tried to surface - What the hell is happening to us? - and I crushed it under a harder stroke. I did not want understanding. I wanted the anger to stay hot enough to burn. I wanted the house to keep feeding whatever dark thing had opened inside me the moment Constance’s hand had first settled over mine.

My hips lifted off the mattress. The mark on my breast ached when I pinched the opposite nipple hard enough to bruise. The dual pain-pleasure coiled tighter. I fucked myself with short, punishing thrusts of my fingers, chasing the edge the way I had chased it against the kitchen island and later against the piano. When the orgasm finally hit it was sharp and almost angry, a clenched, silent spasm that left my thighs trembling and my breath coming in short, ragged pulls.

I lay there afterward with my hand still between my legs, the sheets twisted around one ankle, listening.

The creaking had stopped.

Something stood just on the other side of the locked bedroom door. I could feel the weight of attention the same way I had felt Constance’s gaze. No knock. No voice. Only the sense that the house - or whatever wore its skin - was waiting to see what I would do next.

I did not unlock the door.

I pulled the nightgown back down, turned onto my side again, and closed my eyes with the taste of bitterness and arousal still thick in my mouth.

Sleep, when it finally came, was thin and full of the sound of soft, wet footsteps that never quite reached the bed.