Changed Locks · Part 3: The Night Ferry

Previously: Molly, your father's widow and co-heir, spent a night with you, but when the buyers came Thursday she shut down. You signed your half away and left for the last ferry. She has just blocked the ramp, papers in her fist.

She's across the ramp in three strides, breathing hard, rain in her hair, and before you can speak she tears the papers in half. Then in half again. She throws the pieces at your chest and they stick to your wet jacket.

"I sent them away before you signed," she says. "I sent the buyers home at noon. I didn't know how to say I wanted to stay. So I let you sign. That's the kind of coward I am."

Behind you, a horn. The ramp crew is waving you both on — last ferry, moving now or waiting till morning. Her car sits across the lane, and you're both standing on the ramp, and a deckhand in a yellow slicker shouts, "Car's coming or not?"

"Move it," you say, and she scrambles into the driver's seat, and you run for the deck as the ramp lifts behind you both, chains grinding, the night water sliding away underneath.

The car rolls into the dark car deck and dies there, among the straps and the smell of salt and diesel, and you both start laughing — stuck again, together again, the lake house and everything in it a shoreline shrinking behind you.

The ferry throbs under the car deck lights. She sits in the driver's seat, engine ticking warm, and looks at you across the console.

"I want the house," she says. "And I want you in it. There. I said it out loud. First man I've ever said it to."

"I want you," you say. "That's all. I signed because I thought you needed out."

"I needed you not to leave." Her hand comes across the console and finds your thigh. "Now get in the back."

You climb over the seat and she follows, dress riding up her thick thighs, and she's on you in the dark back seat — the ferry's engines humming through the frame, deckhands' voices somewhere near the ramp, the windows already fogging. She pulls your shirt open and then hikes her dress to her waist and sinks onto your cock with a long, shameless sigh.

"Oh, God, yes. I've thought about this since the boat. Since the tarp. Since your hand on my —" She rides you slow, then faster, the car rocking on its springs. "Quiet. They'll hear. Don't you dare be quiet."

She's bossy again, fully herself — "Hands on my hips. Deeper. I said deeper, you think I'll break? I won't break" — her breasts heavy in your face, the gold chain swinging against your chin, the whole car trembling with the engines and with her.

She comes loudly with her forehead pressed to yours, swearing in a mix of English and Hindi you only half understand, and then she laughs, breathless, and doesn't stop moving.

"Again," she says. "This one's mine. Out there, I'm yours. In here, you're mine."

"Out," she says. "Now."

The car deck is empty and dark, one bulb burning far down the wall, cold air on your wet skin. She bends over the warm bonnet of the car — your car, hers, theirs — dress up around her waist, looking back at you over her shoulder with her hair everywhere.

"Come here and finish what you started," she says. "And put a hand on my mouth if I get loud."

You enter her from behind, one long stroke, and she moans into your palm and pushes back against you. The metal is warm under her hands, the ferry rocks, the water hisses past the hull below, and you fuck her hard and fast the way she's been demanding since the dock, her body shaking with each thrust, her voice muffled and filthy against your fingers.

"Look at me," she gasps, and you pull your hand away and turn her face to yours, and that's the end of you — you come buried deep inside her, groaning her name into her wet hair, and the feeling of you pulsing inside her pulls her over with you, her whole body tightening around your cock, her nails squeaking on the bonnet's paint.

After, she stays bent there a moment, breathing, your cock still inside her, the ferry carrying you both somewhere neither of you planned to go.

"That," she says, "is the only thing in my life I've ever shared."

The ferry docks on the far shore near dawn. She drives you both back in silence, her hand on your leg the whole way, the lake coming up pink and gold through the trees. The house sits where it always has. Gray cedar. Green roof. Home, twice over now.

She parks, walks to the front door, and turns.

"Close your eyes."

You hear her work the lock — metal, tumblers, deliberate. Then she takes your hand, turns it over, and presses a key into your palm. A new key. Bright brass, still warm from her pocket.

"I changed the locks again," she says. "This time there are two."

She pushes the door open on the smell of cedar and coffee and the house you both own, and steps through, and looks back at you with the closest thing to softness she has ever let anyone see.

"Well?" she says. "It's your house too. Come in."