Chapter 503: Friday Night - The Patricia Reckoning

Patricia Morrison’s hands shook so violently the steering wheel vibrated under her palms, knuckles white, manicured nails digging crescents into leather. The key card burned in her lap like a live coal—matte black, silver letters glowing under the garage’s sickly light:

C.G PENTHOUSE - PRIVATE ACCESS

.

One swipe and she’d be his. One swipe and twenty-three years of being a ghost in her own marriage would detonate.

Her cunt throbbed, swollen and slick, the seam of her lace thong soaked through and glued to her folds. Every pulse of the engine under her seat felt like his tongue dragging up her slit, slow and deliberate, the way he’d looked at her in that hallway—like she was

prey

he’d already decided to ruin.

Forty-five years old. Twenty-three years married to a man, jerking his limp cock while whispering

her

name—Peter’s dead mother, the escort who’d broken him so completely that Patricia’s living, breathing body might as well have been a blow-up doll.

Richard hadn’t

seen

her in a decade. Hadn’t

touched

her with anything but obligation. The last time he’d tried to fuck her, he’d rolled off, wiped himself on the sheets, and asked if she’d scheduled the gardener.

She’d swallowed it. Every cold dismissal. Every night he turned away. Every time he looked

through

her like she was a smudge on the wall.

The rage had fermented into something molten, a live wire coiled behind her ribs, sparking every time she caught her reflection and saw the woman she

used

to be—before the Botox, before the diets, before the smile she’d practiced until it felt like plastic.

Tonight she’d dressed to

destroy

.

The dress—three thousand dollars of black liquid sin—clung to her like it had been painted on. One side slashed from collarbone to hip, exposing the smooth plane of her ribs, the sharp jut of her hipbone, the soft undercurve of her breast.

No bra. Her nipples—hard, aching, the color of bruised roses—pushed against the fabric, begging to be twisted. The other side draped modestly, a cruel tease. She’d hidden it in the back of her closet for months, telling herself it was

too much

.

Tonight, she’d stepped into it like armor, the silk whispering over her skin like his hands would soon.

Richard hadn’t looked up from his laptop. Just grunted, "Committee meeting?" and went back to his email. She could’ve walked out naked and he wouldn’t have noticed.

But

he

would. Eros. The boy who’d traced her cheek like she was spun glass, then looked at her like he wanted to

break

her open and lick the shards.

She snatched her clutch—black Chanel, lipstick, phone, the key card that felt like a brand—and shoved out of the car before the good wife could crawl back into her skin. Her Louboutins stabbed the concrete, four inches of red-soled fuck-you, turning her stride into a predator’s prowl. Each click echoed like a countdown.

The elevator doors slid open. She swiped the card with fingers that wouldn’t stop trembling.

PENTHOUSE 3

lit up like a promise and a threat.

Her reflection stared back—blonde waves tumbling over one bare shoulder, smoky eyes smudged with

come-hither

, lips parted like she was already moaning. The dress clung to every curve she’d starved herself for: the swell of her tits, the dip of her waist, the flare of hips that hadn’t been gripped in years.

Between her thighs, her pussy clenched around nothing, dripping down her leg in a slow, shameful trail.

"Last chance, Patricia."

The perfect wife. The committee leader. The woman who smiled while her husband fucked a memory.

She slammed the button so hard her nail nearly cracked.

The ride up was torture. Fifty floors of mirrored walls reflecting her flushed cheeks, the way her chest heaved, the dark wet spot blooming at the apex of her thighs where the dress barely covered her.

She could smell herself—musky, desperate,

ready

.

Her nipples throbbed with every heartbeat. She imagined his mouth on them, teeth scraping, tongue flicking until she begged. Imagined his cock—thick, veined, stretching her open while Richard’s ghost watched and

finally

saw what he’d ignored.

The doors opened to silence so thick it felt like stepping into a vault. Four doors. Art worth more than her house. Lighting that turned her skin gold. Her heels sank into carpet plush enough to fuck on. She walked to door three like she was walking to her own execution—and her

rebirth

.

Swipe. Click.

The air left her lungs in a rush.

The penthouse was obscene. Marble bled into honeyed hardwood. Windows on three sides turned LA into a galaxy of spilled diamonds. The living room alone could’ve swallowed her entire downstairs. A sectional big enough for an orgy. A kitchen that gleamed like it had never been touched. A spiral staircase curling up to what she

knew

was a bedroom with a bed she’d be bent over before the night was out.

She set her clutch on a console table—probably Italian, probably worth more than her car—and stood there, trembling. Not from fear. From the

want

. From the realization that she was

here

. That she’d chosen this. That for the first time in twenty-three years, someone was going to look at her like she was the only thing in the room worth fucking.

Her reflection in the window stared back—blonde, furious,

alive

. The dress clung to her like a second skin, the cut-out side revealing the tremor in her thigh, the way her breath hitched. She was soaked. Dripping. Her clit pulsed with every heartbeat, begging for fingers, tongue, cock—

his

.

She didn’t know if he was already here. Didn’t care. She’d wait. She’d strip. She’d crawl if she had to. Because tonight, Patricia Morrison wasn’t invisible.

Tonight, she was going to

burn

.

This was where he brought women. Where he

unleashed

them from limp-dicked husbands and vanilla boyfriends who fumbled in the dark. Where he delivered the raw, throbbing hunger their men were too timid or too clueless to unleash.

She should feel cheap. Should feel like one smeared signature on a ledger of conquests. Should feel the sharp bite of being just another notch, another trophy fucked and forgotten.

But standing here fifty-one floors above the sprawl, she felt

seen

—truly, achingly seen—for the first time in fucking years, her pulse racing like a live wire under her skin.

Someone had crafted this aerie with deliberate intent. Had anticipated what women craved—not just the slick slide of flesh on flesh, but the deeper ache of being wanted. The lighting bathed her in a golden haze that made her skin glow, not glare with flaws. The furniture curved like an invitation to sink in, to let go, not to pose and perform. The whole space purred you’re safe here, let me devour you slowly instead of barking spread for me now.

Patricia drifted to the windows and flattened her palm against the cool glass, the chill biting into her heated skin. The city pulsed below—millions of lights winking like distant orgasms, millions of lives too far to graze her up here, leaving her suspended in electric isolation.

From this height, the petty shit evaporated. The committee meetings where women grinned with venom tucked behind filler-plumped lips. The charity galas where envy dripped like sweat under chandeliers. The family dinners where Richard stared through her like she was a ghost haunting his plate.

All of it so fucking

tiny

.

She spun from the view and prowled the space like she owned every inch, hips swaying with newfound claim.

The kitchen was pure decadence—marble counters icy under her trailing fingertips, appliances gleaming virgin and untouched, a wine fridge humming low like a lover’s growl in the corner. She yanked it open, rows of bottles gleaming like forbidden fruit that demanded a tongue skilled in French seduction to pronounce. Snatched a Bordeaux that screamed expense, its label heavy with promise.

Crystal glasses chimed like sultry bells when she tapped them free from the cabinet.

Poured deep, the wine pooling dark and viscous, and took a slow, greedy swallow.

It was liquid sin. Velvet heat coating her tongue, tasting of crushed berries and old money, layers unfolding like a tongue tracing secret paths. The kind of wine Richard ordered to flex for clients, never once asking what made

her

mouth water.

Patricia cradled the glass and stalked through the rooms, flinging doors with the reckless abandon of a woman who’d burned her fucks to ash.