The house was a colonial in the suburbs, the kind with a three-car garage and a Mercedes that cost more than my education. I’d been living there for four months—since my mother married Richard, since I became part of a family that had money and secrets and a garage that was about to become my undoing.
Sloane was Richard’s daughter. Twenty-eight. A lawyer who drove the Mercedes and looked at me across the dinner table like I was a case she was preparing to win. We’d been avoiding each other since the engagement party, since the moment she’d kissed me in the pantry while our parents discussed wedding venues.
Tonight was Sunday dinner. Roast chicken. Red wine. Forced conversation. And Sloane’s hand on my thigh under the tablecloth.
After dessert, she’d grabbed my wrist. “Garage. Five minutes. Don’t make me wait.”
I waited six. Then I slipped out the side door, into the garage, into the dark. The Mercedes was unlocked. The back seat smelled like her—leather, perfume, power.
I was lying across the seat, my red dress bunched around my waist, my heart hammering, when she opened the door and climbed on top of me.
“Your father just turned on the porch light,” I whispered, looking up at her in the dim glow from the single bulb. “He’s looking for us. I heard him ask my mother where we went. And my dress is around my waist.”
Sloane didn’t speak. She just leaned down over me, her cheek brushing my collarbone, her hand sliding from my waist to my thigh, her thumb tracing the edge of my underwear with a slowness that was completely devastating.
“If he opens the garage door,” I breathed, my voice trembling as her fingers found me, pressed inside me, moved with a confidence that made my back arch off the leather, “he’ll see his daughter on top of his stepdaughter in the back seat of his Mercedes. He’ll see your hand on me. He’ll see your mouth on my breast and your fingers inside me and he’ll know that his perfect daughter is—”
She turned my face toward her with a hand on my jaw. Her mouth found mine. A kiss that tasted like leather and gasoline and the exact moment when a family dinner becomes something that can never be undone. Her tongue slid against mine, her fingers moving faster, deeper, pressing against the spot that made me see stars.
The porch light flickered.
A shadow approached the garage window. Sloane didn’t stop. She just pressed harder, her thumb circling my clit, her free hand pulling my dress down to expose my breast to the dim light.
Then a tap on the driver’s window.
“Sloane?” Richard’s voice. Muffled by the glass. “You in there? Your mother wants to cut the cake.”
Sloane didn’t remove her hand. She just pressed her other hand over my mouth, her fingers still moving inside me, her eyes locked on mine in the darkness.
“Don’t move,” she whispered against my ear. “He can’t see through the tint. But he can see the car shaking. So be very, very still.”
She made me come while her father stood two feet away. Her fingers inside me, her mouth on my breast, my body shaking with a violence that I prayed the suspension would absorb. I came silently, violently, completely—my cry swallowed by her palm, my tears falling on the leather seat that smelled like her family and my ruin.
“Coming, Dad!” Sloane called out, her voice perfectly steady. “Just grabbing my phone!”
“Okay, hurry! It’s your favorite—chocolate ganache!”
His footsteps retreated. Sloane fixed my dress. Kissed my forehead. And whispered: “Next Sunday, we do this in his Lexus. The suspension is better.”
We did. Every Sunday for six months. Different cars. Different garages. Different risks. Sloane kept a tally in her phone—17 cars, 23 orgasms, 0 times caught.
Richard still doesn’t know why his cars smell like us. He just bought an air freshener. Sloane and I laughed for an hour.
