They had to be here. I got closer to the ring, my foot hitting a step, and I climbed it, finding her phone a few stairs up. I picked it up just as it stopped ringing and went to voicemail. I ended my call.
I took another step, but this time, it brushed something, and I bent down, picking up a long and full mess of fabric. A dress.
“Keep the necklace on,” I heard Michael say. “Just the necklace.”
Huh?
I took another step but heard a moan and halted.
“You’re the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen,” he said, his breathing labored. “You were always the sweetest little thing.”
“Michael,” Rika gasped.
Oh, shit. I dropped the dress and shot my hand to my mouth, scared they would hear my breathing. They must’ve just gotten home. Wonder what they did last night after the party.
I took a slow and careful step back down the stairs.
“But you are keeping things from me,” he told her.
And I stopped.
“I like it when you have your secrets,” he went on, his voice hot and threatening. “It drives me insane in all the best ways. And maybe I have secrets, too.”
“You want me to be suspicious of you?” she challenged.
But then she let out a breathy groan, and I took another step down, the wooden stair whining under my weight.
Fuck! I stopped, my face etched in pain. They hadn’t heard that, had they? Please, please, please… Did they even have wooden stairs in the original cathedral? Wouldn’t they have been stone? Stone doesn’t make noise.
“You’re not suspicious?” he asked. “I spend a lot of time out of town, Rika. I can get whatever I want from anyone I want.”
She whimpered. “Yeah, you can, but you don’t.”
“How do you know?”
The bed creaked, moans and breathing followed, and I shook my head, wishing I was deaf instead.
They were fighting.
While they were having sex.
It was weird.
“Because you’re not stupid,” she threw back at him. “No one will feel like me on your body.”
The headboard banged into the wall faster and faster, and my head filled with their grunts and moaning, their panting picking up pace.
“Rika,” he breathed out.
“You would never risk losing this,” she taunted.
“No,” he agreed. “I don’t want anything but this. Fuck, baby.”
“I love you, Michael,” she whispered loudly as they got caught up in what they were doing. “I’ve always loved you.”
And I stood there, no longer wincing or dreading my invasion of their privacy but feeling everything they were feeling and wanting more.
The skin touching skin. My body on fire and alive with him. His breath. His tongue. His mouth and hands. His teeth nipping at my stomach and thighs.