Runner's Prize
Copyright© 2026 by INtrinSicliValud
Chapter 1
Erotica Sex Story: Chapter 1 - Young and driven to succeed, Tigh Raines has everything. A barren upscale apartment. His father, the company head, providing far too much advice. And a laser-like focus on the future, one that has no place for the rain-soaked beauty on an isolated park bench. She’s sobbing; he stops. Heat ensues.
Caution: This Erotica Sex Story contains strong sexual content, including Ma/Fa Fa/Fa Mult Consensual Romantic
“Damn it,” I grumbled, glaring at the time on my phone.
After shoving aside the bed sheets and getting to my feet, I gathered my running gear. Like tiny jewels, glimmering droplets clung to my apartment windows. Beyond the other downtown towers, dim flashes in a night sky heavy with clouds along with fading thunder announced the departure of the storm that had serenaded my tossing and turning.
Back from a two-week assessment of a mining conglomerate in Mongolia, my internal clock remained haywire. You’d think after all the travel for dad, it wouldn’t affect me as much, but it did.
“Don’t worry, Tigh. You’ll get used to it,” he had said, head-cocked and wearing that not quite judgmental half-smile as we parted at the airport.
While lacing my shoes, I’d no clue he’d soon become the least of my problems, nor that my world teetered, about to be smashed into a million pieces.
Well before dawn, the streets remained dark but for isolated circles beneath streetlights. In the shadows, broad puddles and dribbling rivulets shimmered. Soon enough, the chill on my skin faded, and as usual, while pounding along the damp pavement, I let time wander away. As my sneakers splashed, my mind began forming the data for dad’s report. Numbers and images of the decrepit facilities tumbled, forming and reforming.
Right as I jogged past a cross street, a drizzle swirled from it, engulfing me. Even as I moved beyond the intersection, the rain stiffened and still mostly focused on Mongolia, the rest of my brain made a simple decision.
At the next crossing, a literal fork in the road, I slowed. My usual route continued another four miles straight ahead, but at fresh thunder rumbling closer, and a bright flash overhead, illuminating the base of thickening, dark clouds, I shook my head.
Thus, a fateful decision: my loping strides moved to the left. Shorter, that two-mile path led to a footbridge over a concrete-lined “river.” It also twisted through the rougher section of town, not that anyone should be about that early or in such weather.
By the half-mile mark, I nodded to myself. Yep, correct. The only fool moving along the darker roadways looked a lot like me. As the raindrops grew heavier, spattering down in the glimmer of fewer working streetlamps, my ever-damper footfalls carried me past seedy bars, all dark and silent by then, a multitude of pawnshops bearing garish signs and shut storefronts.
Intermixed with commercial lots and trash-littered empty spaces, squatted residential buildings. The dirt-streaked blocks reeked of misfortune, destitution, and empty hopes. Right as the rainfall strengthened, a mist swirled up from the ground, adding to an already oppressive gloom.
At last, the narrow bridge’s arching white metal frame came into sight, and, shoes splashing louder, I increased my pace. As my racing footsteps dodged spreading puddles, greater puffs of fog blasted from my mouth. The memory of Coach Stanton, my fierce-faced high school track coach, appeared.
“Time to bring it home,” I muttered, sending droplets from my lips to glitter in the dim mist.
In mid-stride, arms pumping, breath puffing in the dimness before me, it happened. Head in hands, a lone figure on a bench under a flickering streetlamp caught my attention. As I neared, the shadowed silhouette resolved into a woman sitting bent forward with legs crossed. Long dark hair, glimmering along with the raindrops slicing beneath the flashing light, lay plastered to her, curtaining her face and torso. Drops of water spattered from the matted ends to the sidewalk’s cracked, shiny concrete.
Another junkie? Or an exhausted hooker, too tired or strung-out on any of a dozen drugs, more likely a mixture, to find her way back to a sleeping pimp. Just one example of countless misfortunate city-dwellers.
Soaked, a thin ivory top had become a second skin over her bent spine. No more than a tiny strip of leopard print, a miniskirt revealed most of toned, olive-skinned legs ending in glossy black heels.
So, a hooker.
In any event, at that moment, she didn’t appear to be a wrecking ball. Especially when my splashing sneakers slowed, and quiet sobbing met my ears.
On any other day, with rain intensifying by the second, mighty rumbles shaking the darkness, and the flashes overhead quickening, I would have jogged onward, avoiding the deepening puddles. But not that day. On that day, my brain chose to rebel.
Sure, my father’s warning echoed. The one reinforced by him since forever.
“Son, a million sob stories reside down there.” Arm around my shoulder, he’d gazed from the massive windows lining his equally massive office high atop a ... massive skyscraper. “We can’t fix them all. You worry about yourself. Focus on this business. And your future. The world can take care of itself.”
When I’d given him a slow nod, he had smiled the smile of a righteous parent.
But right then, the woman’s hitching sobs spiked, and my sneakers splatted to a halt before that rain-soaked bench. Maybe a bit of mom lingered. Or perhaps some part of me wished my world would shatter.
“You okay?” I said, keeping my distance, squatting on the road, fast becoming a stream. “This, uh, isn’t such a nice neighborhood.”
With no break in the sobs, she nodded. After a quiet sniffle, she pointed behind her.
“Si, claro,” came from beneath the dripping shiny hair in a heavy Spanish accent. “I know. I live here.” Another sob left her. “Well, um, a couple of blocks over.”
After following her gesture, I squinted through the sluicing droplets. In a flash of lightning, beyond a pathetic tangle of playground equipment, rusty and chipped, once-colorful paint glistening in the rain, stretched a shadowed neighborhood. A street of old brownstone row houses, more than a few sporting boarded windows.
With a heavy breath, I returned to her. A quick sweep of my brow with the back of my wrist sent droplets twinkling to the ground. Thunder rumbled ever closer, and lightning lit the nearby footbridge leading to the towers. In my mind, dad reappeared, head-cocked, wearing that damn smile, and hand gesturing. Neither my world, nor was she my problem.
Except, instead of rising and heading towards my life, I stayed in place, scanning her. Call it fate, mom, a desire for ... change, whatever, but my lips parted, admitting cool raindrops.
“You, um, don’t seem alright,” I said.
Although I expected another nod, perhaps a curse and a curt “get lost,” her head flew upwards. At the sight of a fine-boned face, covered in droplets, sparkling like diamonds under the blinking light, my heart stammered. Despite the smeared makeup, a visage of royalty appeared, as in one of those paintings of Spanish queens. The ones who’d sent thousands of besotted men to explore or fight for them with the merest flick of a dainty wrist or bat of a long, dark eyelash.