Landlady
"He's three months behind on rent. She has alternative payment arrangements."
The eviction notice crinkles in my shaking hands.
Final warning. Payment due in full by Friday or legal proceedings will commence.
Three months. Three months of scraping and borrowing and selling everything I own that isn't bolted down, and I'm still twelve thousand credits short. The gig economy crashed, the corp jobs dried up, and now I'm twenty-five years old, staring at the end of the only stable housing I've ever had.
The knock comes at seven PM.
I know who it is before I open the door. Mrs. Oyelaran—Adaeze, though I've never dared use her first name—owns this entire building. Twelve units of crumbling pre-Collapse architecture in the ass-end of Neo-Houston, and she runs it all with an iron fist wrapped in velvet hospitality.
She's also the most beautiful woman I've ever seen.
Fifty-six years old. Nigerian, with skin like oiled mahogany and a body that defies every law of physics I know. She must be two-sixty, maybe two-seventy—all of it curves, all of it soft, all of it wrapped in a caftan of emerald silk that flows around her like water. Her hair is wrapped in a matching gele, her neck drips with gold, and her eyes—dark, knowing, ancient—see straight through to my soul.
"Mr. Chen," she says. Her voice is honey and gravel, accented with something that makes my spine tingle. "We need to discuss your situation."
Her apartment is the entire top floor.
I've never been up here before—tenants don't get invited into Mrs. Oyelaran's private space. But now I'm sitting on a velvet couch that probably costs more than my yearly salary, watching her pour palm wine into crystal glasses, trying not to stare at the way her caftan parts when she moves.
"Twelve thousand credits," she says, settling into an armchair across from me. The chair creaks under her weight—not protest, almost pleasure. "Plus late fees. Plus the interest I've been waiving out of goodwill."
"I know. I'm sorry. I've been trying—"
"I'm sure you have." She sips her wine. "But trying doesn't keep the lights on, does it? Trying doesn't pay my property taxes."
"If you could just give me another month—"
"I've given you three months, Mr. Chen. Three months of carrying your debt, of explaining to my accountant why unit 4B shows nothing but red." She sets down her glass. "I'm not a charity."
"I know."
"So." She leans forward, and her breasts shift beneath the silk—heavy, pendulous, mesmerizing. "What do you propose we do about this?"
I stare at my hands. At the wine I haven't touched. At anything except the impossible reality that I'm about to be homeless.
"I don't know," I admit. "I don't have anything left."
"Everyone has something." Her voice drops, becomes something lower. Something dangerous. "The question is whether you're willing to offer it."
"I'm going to be direct with you, Mr. Chen."
She rises from her chair and moves toward me. The caftan flows, parts, gives me glimpses of thick legs, of ankles circled with gold. She smells like shea butter and something spicier—cloves, maybe, or cinnamon.
"I am a widow. My husband died eleven years ago. Since then, I have not taken a lover." She stops in front of me, close enough that her knees almost touch mine. "Not because I don't want one. Because the men in this district are either too poor to interest me or too proud to submit."
"Submit?"
"I am not a young woman, Mr. Chen. I am not thin. I am not what the feeds tell you to desire." She reaches down, cups my chin, tilts my face up. Her palm is warm, soft, smelling of cocoa butter. "But I know what I want. And what I want is a man who will worship me. Not despite what I am, but because of it."
My mouth is dry. My pulse is hammering.
"What are you saying?"
"I'm saying your debt can disappear. All of it—the back rent, the fees, the interest. I'll even reduce your going rate by half." Her thumb traces my lower lip, and I shiver. "But you'll pay me in other ways. Once a week, you'll come to this apartment. You'll give me what I need. And in exchange, you'll never worry about rent again."
"You want me to—"
"I want you to fuck me, Mr. Chen." The word lands like a thunderclap. "Properly. Enthusiastically. As often as I require. Is that clear enough?"
I should say no.
This is coercion. Exploitation. A woman using her power over my housing to extract sex. Every ethical framework I know says I should walk out that door and take my chances on the street.
But I don't move.
Because the truth is—the shameful, secret truth I've been carrying since I moved into this building two years ago—I've wanted her since the day I signed my lease. Wanted those curves. That voice. The way she moves through the world like she owns it, because she does own it, every square foot.
"Yes," I hear myself say.
"Yes, what?"
"Yes, I'll do it. Whatever you want."
Her smile is slow. Triumphant. Absolutely devastating.
"Good boy." She releases my chin, steps back. "Now. Let's begin your first payment."
The caftan falls to the floor.
She's naked beneath.
No underwear, no modesty, just her—all two hundred and seventy pounds of gleaming mahogany flesh. Her breasts are enormous, hanging heavy to her waist, nipples dark as coffee and already hardening in the cool air. Her belly is round and soft, folding into itself in ways that make my hands ache to touch. Her hips are wide enough to block doorways, her thighs thick as tree trunks, and between them—
She's bare. Smooth. Glistening with something that might be anticipation.
"Well?" She spreads her arms. "Is this what you imagined, Mr. Chen? All those times you watched me in the hallway? All those dreams you pretended you didn't have?"
"I never—"
"Don't lie. I've seen you looking. I've felt your eyes on me for two years." She moves toward me, her body swaying, everything jiggling and rolling in ways that make my cock strain against my pants. "Now you don't have to look. Now you can touch."
She takes my hands. Places them on her hips.
The softness is indescribable. Like sinking into warm bread dough. Like drowning in flesh and heat and woman.
"Touch me," she commands.
I touch her like she's sacred.
Because she is. Because this body—this massive, soft, gloriously abundant body—is everything I've been trained to reject and everything I've secretly craved. I run my hands up her sides, feeling the rolls and creases, the places where flesh folds into flesh. I cup her breasts and gasp at the weight of them, at how they overflow my hands, at the way her nipples harden further under my palms.
"Your mouth," she says. "Use it."
I lean forward and take one nipple between my lips. The taste of her skin—shea butter, sweat, something uniquely her—floods my senses. She sighs above me, her hand coming to rest on the back of my head, pressing me closer.
"That's it. That's it, boy. Show me how much you want this."
I show her.
I worship her breasts until she's panting. I kiss my way down her belly—every roll, every fold, every stretch mark that tells the story of her life. I kneel before her and spread her thick thighs and bury my face in the wet heat of her, tasting her for the first time, hearing her cry out in a language I don't speak.
She grinds against my face. Uses me. Takes her pleasure like it's owed to her—because it is. Because this is the payment, and I'm paying with everything I have.
When she comes, she nearly smothers me between those massive thighs.
I've never been happier to be unable to breathe.
"On the bed," she commands.
Her bedroom is all dark wood and white linens, dominated by a four-poster bed that could sleep six. She points to it. I strip off my clothes—hands shaking, cock straining—and lie where she indicates.
She climbs onto the mattress.
The bed groans. The springs protest. And then she's straddling me—all that weight pressing down on my hips, my thighs, my everything. I can barely move. Can barely think.
"Inside me," she says. "Now."
She reaches down, positions me, and sinks.
The sensation is—there's no word. She's hot and wet and tight, and every inch of her is pressing down on me, pinning me to the mattress, making me hers in ways I never knew I could be claimed.
She begins to move.
Slow at first. Grinding. Circular motions that make me gasp and clutch at her thighs. Then faster—bouncing, her breasts swinging above me, her belly rippling, the whole massive landscape of her in motion while I lie pinned beneath.
"This is what you owe me," she pants. "This is what you pay. Every week. Every month. Until I decide I've had enough."
"Yes—"
"Say it. Say what you are."
"I'm yours. Your—your tenant. Your payment. Whatever you want—"
"Good boy."
She rides me until I can't think. Until I can't breathe. Until the world narrows to nothing but her—her heat, her weight, her voice commanding me to hold on, don't come, not yet, not until I say.
When she finally lets me finish, I scream.
We lie in the wreckage of her bed.
Her weight is still half on top of me, soft and warm and real. I should feel used. Exploited. Ashamed of what I've just done—traded my body for shelter like some kind of—
"Stop thinking so loudly," she murmurs.
"I'm not—"
"You are. You're wondering if this makes you a whore." She props herself up on one elbow, looks at me with those ancient eyes. "Does it matter?"
"I don't know."
"Then let me tell you what I see." She traces a finger down my chest. "I see a young man who was facing homelessness. I see a woman who was facing another decade of loneliness. And I see an arrangement that benefits us both."
"You make it sound simple."
"It is simple. The world makes it complicated—tells us who we should want, how we should get it, what counts as proper." She snorts. "I stopped caring about proper when I buried my husband. Life is too short for shame."
I'm quiet for a moment.
"Once a week?" I finally ask.
"To start. Perhaps more, if you prove... adequate." She smiles. "Which, so far, you have."
"And my rent?"
"Paid in full. Consider this month a trial period." She leans down, presses her lips to mine—soft, almost tender. "If we're both satisfied at the end, we'll make it permanent."
Months pass.
I stop thinking of it as payment. Start thinking of it as ours—this thing we've built in her top-floor apartment, away from the world's judgment. She teaches me what she likes: the exact pressure on her clit, the way to grip her hips when she rides me, the words that make her shatter. I learn her body like a language, become fluent in the tongue of her pleasure.
And somewhere along the way, I fall in love.
"This wasn't supposed to happen," I tell her one night.
"No." She's lying beside me, her head on my chest, her weight a comfort rather than a burden. "But when has supposed to ever mattered?"
"What are we doing, Adaeze?"
She goes still. It's the first time I've used her name.
"Say that again."
"Adaeze." I tilt her face up, look into her eyes. "I love you. Not because you own my building. Not because you saved me from the streets. Because you're magnificent. Because you looked at a scared kid and saw something worth wanting. Because—"
She silences me with a kiss.
"I love you too, stupid boy." Her voice is thick. "I have for months. I just didn't know how to say it without sounding like a foolish old woman."
"You're not old. You're not foolish. You're—"
"Enough." She pulls me on top of her, and I feel her spread beneath me, welcoming, endless. "Show me instead."
I show her.
And in a crumbling building in Neo-Houston, a landlady and her tenant stop pretending their arrangement is just business—and start building something that no eviction notice could ever threaten.
Rent paid.
In full.
Forever.