Past Due
"He's three months behind on rent. His landlady has a proposal that doesn't involve money."
The eviction notice arrives on a Tuesday.
I stare at it for ten minutes, doing the math I've already done a hundred times. Three months behind. Four thousand dollars I don't have. Student loans eating half my paycheck, the rest going to food and gas and the slow hemorrhage of just existing in this city.
I'm twenty-three years old and I'm about to be homeless.
The notice says I have seven days to pay or vacate. Seven days to find four thousand dollars, or find a new place to live, or find a cardboard box that fits.
There's a handwritten note at the bottom:
Come see me tonight. 7 PM. We should talk. —Patricia
Patricia Okonkwo owns the building.
She's fifty-one, Nigerian, widowed three years ago when her husband had a heart attack shoveling snow. She inherited the building and six others like it—a real estate empire built by a man who worked himself to death, now managed by a woman who seems to do nothing but collect rent and tend her rooftop garden.
I've seen her maybe a dozen times since I moved in. Quick exchanges in the hallway, brief conversations about maintenance requests. She's always impeccably dressed—colorful wraps, gold jewelry, heels that click on the tile floors.
She's also massive.
Not tall—maybe five-four—but wide. Hips that brush both sides of the hallway when she walks. Breasts that strain against her blouses, that seem to arrive in a room before the rest of her. A belly that curves out proud and round, that she doesn't try to hide or minimize. Thighs like pillars holding up a temple.
I've tried not to look.
I've failed.
And now I'm standing outside her door at 7 PM with an eviction notice in my pocket and no idea what she wants to talk about.
She opens the door in a silk robe.
Deep green, tied loosely at the waist, showing a V of dark cleavage that makes my brain short-circuit. Her hair is wrapped in a matching green scarf. Her feet are bare, toenails painted gold.
"Marcus." She steps aside. "Come in."
Her apartment is the entire top floor of the building. High ceilings, expensive furniture, art on the walls that probably costs more than I make in a year. She leads me to a sitting area with leather couches and a view of the city skyline.
"Sit."
I sit.
She doesn't. She stands in front of me, arms crossed under her breasts—pushing them up, making them even more impossible to ignore—and looks at me like she's deciding something.
"You're behind on your rent."
"I know. I'm sorry, I—"
"Three months. Four thousand, two hundred dollars." Her voice is calm. Almost clinical. "I've let it slide because you've been a good tenant. Quiet. Respectful. But I can't let it slide forever."
"I understand. I just need more time—"
"Time won't solve your problem." She moves closer. Sits on the coffee table directly in front of me, her knees almost touching mine. The robe gaps open slightly, and I can see the curve of her belly, the shadow between her thighs. "I've looked into your finances, Marcus. I own this building—I do background checks. I know what you make. I know what you owe. The math doesn't work."
My face burns. "That's... pretty invasive."
"That's business." She leans forward. Her breasts shift, heavy, threatening to spill from the silk. "But I'm not here to talk about business. I'm here to talk about an arrangement."
"An arrangement?"
"You owe me money you don't have. I have money I don't need." Her eyes hold mine. "What I don't have is... companionship."
The word hangs in the air.
"Mrs. Okonkwo—"
"Patricia." She reaches out, places her hand on my knee. Her palm is warm through my jeans. "My husband died three years ago. He was the only man I'd been with since I was nineteen. And since he died, I've been... alone."
"I'm sorry, but I don't think—"
"I'm not asking you to think." Her hand slides higher. Stops mid-thigh. "I'm asking you to listen to my proposal. And then you can decide."
I should leave. Should stand up and walk out and figure out the money some other way.
But her hand is on my thigh. And her robe is falling open. And I'm not moving.
"What's the proposal?"
She tells me.
One night per week. Every Friday. I come to her apartment at 8 PM and leave Saturday morning. In exchange, she forgives my debt—all of it—and reduces my rent by half going forward.
"You're talking about..." I can't say it.
"Sex." She says it for me. No shame. No hesitation. "I'm talking about sex, Marcus. I'm a fifty-one-year-old widow with needs that aren't being met. You're a twenty-three-year-old man who can't pay his rent. This solves both our problems."
"That's... you're my landlady. That's—"
"Unconventional?" She laughs, low and rich. "Perhaps. But I'm not interested in conventional. I'm interested in getting what I want." Her hand slides higher, cups me through my jeans. I'm hard—have been since she sat down—and she feels it. Smiles. "And it seems like you might be interested too."
"This is insane."
"This is practical." She squeezes gently. I groan. "You need money. I need a man. We help each other." She leans closer, her lips brushing my ear. "And I promise you, Marcus... I'll make it worth your while."
Her other hand goes to the tie of her robe.
"Let me show you what you'd be getting."
The robe falls open.
She's naked underneath.
I forget how to breathe.
Her body is a landscape—mountains and valleys of dark flesh, curves that go on forever. Her breasts are enormous, hanging heavy against her chest, nipples thick and dark and hard. Her belly is a soft dome, marked with stretch marks that look like lightning captured in skin. Her hips flare wide, leading to thighs that could crush me, that I suddenly want to crush me.
Between them, she's bare. Shaved smooth. Wet.
"Well?" She stands, lets the robe fall to the floor. Holds her arms out. Turns slowly, letting me see all of her—the massive curve of her ass, the dimples at the base of her spine, the way her flesh ripples when she moves. "Do we have a deal?"
I should say no.
I should walk out.
I reach for her instead.
She takes control immediately.
The moment my hands touch her hips, she pushes me back onto the couch, straddles me, pins me down with her weight. All two hundred and fifty pounds of her, settling onto my lap like she owns me—because starting now, she kind of does.
"First lesson," she says, reaching for my belt. "You don't touch unless I say. You don't move unless I say. You exist to please me. Understand?"
"Yes."
"Yes what?"
"Yes... Patricia?"
"Good boy." She frees my cock, wraps her hand around it, strokes slowly. "Very good boy."
She lifts herself, positions me at her entrance, and sinks down in one smooth motion.
I nearly black out.
She's tight—impossibly tight for her size—and hot, and wet, and gripping me like she never wants to let go. Her weight pins me to the couch, makes it impossible to thrust, impossible to do anything but lie there while she takes what she wants.
"Yes," she hisses. "This is what I needed. A young, hard cock inside me. It's been so long—so fucking long—"
She starts to move.
Grinding. Rolling her hips in slow circles, then faster, then slow again. Her breasts sway above me—massive pendulums, hypnotic. I reach for them, cup them, feel their impossible weight fill my palms.
"Good," she breathes. "Worship them. Show me how much you want them."
I pull a nipple to my mouth. Suck. She cries out, her pussy clenching around me.
"Harder."
I suck harder. Bite gently. She screams.
"Yes—yes—just like that—don't stop—"
She rides me faster now, bouncing on my cock, her belly rippling with each impact. The couch groans beneath us. The whole apartment seems to shake.
"I'm going to come," she gasps. "Going to come on my tenant's cock—is that what you want? You want your landlady to use you?"
"Yes—fuck—yes—"
She slams down and shatters.
Her body convulses—all that flesh trembling, shaking, her pussy gripping me so tight it almost hurts. She throws her head back and moans, a sound that comes from somewhere deep and primal.
I can't hold back.
I grab her hips and thrust up, once, twice, and then I'm exploding inside her—filling my landlady with everything I have while she's still shaking through her orgasm.
We collapse together.
She stays on top of me. Stays full of me. Her weight pins me to the cushions.
"That," she breathes, "was an excellent down payment."
Friday becomes my favorite day of the week.
Every week at 8 PM, I knock on her door. Every week, she opens it in something different—silk robes, lace lingerie, sometimes nothing at all. Every week, she uses me exactly how she wants.
She rides me on her couch.
She bends over her kitchen counter and tells me to take her from behind.
She sits on my face for an hour, grinding on my tongue while she reads a book, coming three times before she lets me up for air.
She teaches me things. How to touch her. How to read her body. How to make her scream.
"You're learning," she tells me one night, lying in her massive bed, my head resting on her soft belly. "My husband never learned. Thirty years, and he never figured out what I needed."
"What do you need?"
"Attention." She strokes my hair. "Worship. A man who looks at my body and sees something worth exploring, not something to get through."
I lift my head. Look at her—all of her, spread out on the sheets like a feast.
"I see something worth exploring."
She smiles. Pulls me up for a kiss.
"I know you do. That's why I chose you."
Six months in, she changes the terms.
"I want you twice a week now," she says. "Fridays and Tuesdays."
"That wasn't the deal."
"The deal was I forgive your debt and reduce your rent. I've done that." She traces a finger down my chest. We're in her bed again, tangled in sheets that probably cost more than my car. "This is a new deal. Twice a week, and I pay off your student loans."
I stare at her. "That's... eighty thousand dollars."
"I know."
"You can't just—"
"I can do whatever I want. I'm a rich widow with no children and no one to spend my money on." She cups my face. "Except you."
"Why?"
"Because you make me feel alive." She kisses me, soft and slow. "Because when you look at me, I feel like a woman again, not just a landlord. Because—" She pauses. Something vulnerable flickers in her eyes. "Because I'm falling in love with you, Marcus. And I don't know what to do about it."
The words hang in the air.
I should be scared. Should feel trapped, bought, owned.
Instead, I feel something else entirely.
"Tuesday and Friday," I say. "And I cook you dinner first."
She laughs—surprised, delighted.
"You can cook?"
"I can learn."
She pulls me down on top of her. Her legs wrap around my waist. Her hands grip my back.
"Then we have a deal."
One year later, I move into her apartment.
Not as a tenant. Not as an arrangement.
As something else.
She pays off my loans. Helps me get a better job with one of her business contacts. Introduces me to her friends—other wealthy widows who raise their eyebrows but say nothing, who probably have their own young men tucked away somewhere.
"They're jealous," she tells me one night. "They see what I have and they want it."
"What do you have?"
She straddles me—her favorite position, the one that lets her control everything—and sinks onto my cock with a moan.
"Everything," she breathes. "I have everything."
And the thing is?
So do I.
The eviction notice is still in my desk drawer somewhere. A reminder of how close I came to losing it all. How a desperate knock on a door led to this—to silk sheets and soft flesh and a woman who looks at me like I'm the only thing worth seeing.
I was three months behind on rent.
Now I'm a lifetime ahead.
Some debts, it turns out, are worth paying.
In any currency she wants.