BW | Chapter 3: The Ghost of a Touch

The final night arrived like a death sentence.

John’s text had come in that morning: “Finish line in sight. Home tomorrow evening. I’ve missed you both.” The message sat on the kitchen counter like a ticking bomb. Throughout the day, Jake and Camila moved through the house in a state of mourning, avoiding each other’s eyes because the weight of the “last time” was too heavy to carry. But as the sun dipped below the horizon, the pretense of distance shattered.

By midnight, they were in the guest room, the place where it had all begun. This wasn’t like the frantic, adrenaline-fueled encounters in the kitchen or the study. This was slow. This was a goodbye.

The room was bathed in the amber glow of a single lamp. Jake sat on the edge of the bed, watching Camila as she stood by the window, her silhouette framed by the moonlight. She was wearing the red dress again, the one he had torn a month ago, now meticulously mended.

“Come here,” he said, his voice a low, raw rasp.

Camila turned, her eyes swimming with unshed tears. She walked to him, and as she reached the bed, she didn’t wait for him to touch her. She sank to her knees between his legs, resting her forehead against his chest.

“I don’t know how to go back,” she whispered, her voice breaking. “How do I sit at the table with him? How do I let him touch me after this?”

Jake cupped her face, forcing her to look up at him. “You don’t go back, Camila. Not really. We’ve crossed a line that doesn’t exist anymore.” He leaned down, pressing his forehead against hers. “Tonight, I don’t want to think about him. I want to memorise you. I want to feel every inch of you so deeply that it stays in my marrow when he’s standing between us tomorrow.”

He stood up, pulling her with him. He began to unzip the dress, the sound of the teeth parting loud in the silent room. He didn’t rush. He kissed every inch of skin as it was revealed—her shoulder blades, the curve of her spine, the small of her back.

When the dress pooled at her feet, he turned her around. His eyes were dark, filled with a possessiveness that verged on pain. He lifted her, carrying her to the bed, and as he settled between her thighs, the air in the room seemed to vanish.

This night was different. There was no holding back, no muffled moans for the sake of the neighbors or the maid. Jake moved with a slow, agonizing deliberate force, as if he were trying to write his name into her soul. He watched her face as he pushed deep inside her, watching the way her eyes rolled back and the way her lips parted to speak his name—only his name.

“Look at me,” he commanded, his voice shaking with the effort to stay slow.

Camila opened her eyes, her pupils blown wide with pleasure and grief. She reached up, her fingers tangling in his hair, pulling him down for a kiss that tasted of desperation.

“I’m yours,” she sobbed into his mouth. “Jake, I’m yours.”

“Say it again,” he growled, his pace quickening as the end drew near.

“I’m yours. Only yours.”

The room seemed to spin as they reached the climax together, a violent, soul-shattering peak that left them both gasping for air. Jake collapsed against her, his face buried in the crook of her neck, his heart hammering against hers in a frantic, uneven rhythm.

They stayed like that for a long time, the sweat cooling on their skin, the silence of the house pressing in on them. Jake shifted, pulling her into the crook of his arm, his hand resting protectively over her stomach.

“He’ll be here in twelve hours,” Camila whispered into the dark.

Jake tightened his grip, his jaw set in a hard, grim line. “Then we have twelve hours left of the truth. After that, we start the lie.”

But as he looked at the mended red dress draped over the chair, Jake knew the lie wouldn’t last. They hadn’t just built an affair; they had built a sanctuary, and neither of them was ready to let it burn.

The slow, mournful pace of the evening suddenly shattered. The realization that John was less than twelve hours away didn’t just bring sadness—it brought a frantic, jagged desperation.

Jake looked at Camila, and the sight of her tear-streaked face mixed with the memory of a month of stolen bliss snapped something inside him. He didn’t want to be gentle anymore. Gentleness was for a lifetime they didn’t have. He wanted to claim her so thoroughly that John’s touch would feel like a ghost’s.

He grabbed her waist and flipped her over, pressing her face-down into the pillows.

“Jake—” she gasped, her voice muffled by the linen.

“I’m not letting you forget this,” he growled, his voice a low, primal warning. He hiked her hips up, his movements aggressive and devoid of his usual caution. There was no more ‘uncle’ Jake, no more ‘brother’ Jake. There was only the man who was losing the only thing that made him feel alive.

He entered her with a single, forceful thrust that made the headboard crack against the wall. Camila let out a sharp, guttural cry, but she didn’t pull away. Instead, she pushed back against him, her own desperation matching his. The fear of tomorrow had stripped away her last layers of reserve. She became bold, her body seeking the friction, the pain, and the heat with a hunger that bordered on violent.

“Harder,” she choked out, her fingers clawing at the sheets. “Make me feel it, Jake. Make me forget everything else.”

Jake complied with a ruthless intensity. Every strike was a brand, a deep and heavy invasion that shook the very frame of the bed. He gripped her hair, tilting her head back so he could see her face in the mirror across the room—to see her eyes glazed over, her skin flushed, her identity as John’s wife burning away in the crucible of their sin.

He was relentless, his breath coming in jagged snarls. He didn’t care about the noise anymore. He wanted the walls to hear. He wanted the house to know who she really belonged to.

Camila reached back, her hand finding his thigh, her nails digging into his skin to pull him even deeper. She was a woman possessed, tossing her head from side to side, her moans turning into raw, unbridled screams of release. She wanted the ache to be so deep that she wouldn’t be able to walk straight when John walked through the door.

“You’re mine,” Jake hissed, his teeth sinking into the slope of her shoulder. “Tell me. Whose are you?”

“Yours!” she shrieked, her body beginning to convulse as the first wave of a violent climax hit her. “Always yours, Jake! Ahh!”

The intensity was deafening. Jake didn’t hold back, his own release hitting him like a physical blow. He lunged forward, pinning her body flat against the mattress as he came, his muscles locked in a hard, trembling spasm. He stayed buried inside her, his chest heaving, his sweat dripping onto her back, both of them vibrating from the sheer, raw force of what they had just done.

The silence that followed was heavy, weighted by the scent of sex and the looming shadow of the morning.

Jake finally collapsed beside her, pulling her sweat-slicked body against his. He was shaking. They both were. It wasn’t just a physical end; it felt like they had torn something out of the universe that they weren’t allowed to have.

“If that was the last time,” Jake whispered into her damp hair, his voice breaking, “then I’m already dead.”

Camila didn’t answer. She only clung to his arm, her eyes fixed on the door, listening for the sound of a car that wasn’t there yet, but was coming all the same.