Chapter 3: Tuesday: The Wake

The back room of O’Malley’s Pub smelled of stale beer, lukewarm funeral casseroles, and the faint, fading sweetness of lavender sachets someone had scattered in a hopeless attempt to mask the grief. Mrs. Evelyn Hargrove had been laid to rest that morning under a gray, drizzling sky, and now the neighborhood had gathered to toast the cranky ninety-three-year-old who had outlived three husbands and terrorized four generations with her sharp tongue and sharper eyes.

The four sinners arrived together, dressed in black that somehow looked indecent on every one of them.

Mark kept his hand at the small of Claire’s back as they entered, guiding her through clusters of elderly neighbors and distant cousins. To outsiders he was the respectful almost-nephew offering support. In reality, his fingers kept pressing the base of the thick silicone plug he had worked deep into her ass before they left the house. Every step made it shift and press against that deliciously sensitive spot inside her. His secret today was ugly and thrilling: he felt almost nothing for the dead woman. Mrs. Hargrove had once caught him and Ethan kissing at seventeen and threatened to tell their parents. Part of him was glad she was gone. The darker part was rock-hard at the thought of defiling her memory right here in her favorite pub.

Claire smiled politely at the mourners, but her mind was a hurricane of conflicting emotions. She had genuinely liked the old bat who used to slip her extra garden tomatoes and complain bitterly about “today’s youth.” Yet right now she was soaked, the plug pressing with every movement, and the taste of Javier’s cock still lingered faintly on her tongue from their frantic lunch-hour meeting behind the funeral home. She wore the same black dress, and the scent of her trainer’s cologne still clung to her inner thighs. Real sorrow twisted with electric shame and filthy excitement.

Ethan stood near the memorial table covered in faded photos and a half-empty guest book. He looked every inch the grieving almost-nephew in his fitted black shirt, but his cock strained painfully against his trousers. He had already come twice today — once down Mark’s throat before breakfast, once buried inside Claire while Mark watched and stroked himself. His deeper secret terrified him: he was falling stupidly, irreversibly in love with both of them. The wake felt like both punishment and permission at once.