I take her wrist. Gently. My fingers wrap around the narrow bone, and I can feel her pulse hammering against my thumb. She doesn't pull away. Her eyes are on mine, wide, dark, the pupils blown.
"Because I'm going to show you," I say.
I lift her wrist above her head. Slowly. Watching her face for the flinch, the resistance, the moment she decides this isn't what she wants. Her arm goes up. Her back finds the wall behind her—she didn't know it was there, I can see the surprise in her eyes when she feels the cold plaster against her shoulders through the thin fabric of the dress.
I pin her wrist against the wall. Not hard. Not rough. But firm. The kind of grip that saysI have youwithout sayingyou can't leave.
Her breathing fractures. A sharp intake, a stuttered exhale. Her free hand comes up—to push me away, I think—but it lands on my chest and stays there. Flat. Feeling my heartbeat through the shirt.
"Tell me to stop," I say.
She doesn't.
I take her other wrist. Bring it up beside the first. Hold both of them against the wall above her head with one hand, my fingers circling both wrists, and she's pinned—arms up, back against the wall, her body arched toward mine, the green dress pulling across her hips.
The sound she makes is not the sound from the studio. It's quieter. Deeper. The sound of a woman who's discovering something about herself that she didn't know was there. A want she's never given voice to because she's never been in a position to voice it—because voicing it means surrendering control, and control is the only thing that's ever kept her safe.
She's surrendering it. Right now. In my apartment, against my wall, with my hand around her wrists. She's letting go of the thing she's held onto for twenty-eight years, and she's terrified, and she's not stopping.
I lean in. My mouth finds her throat—not her lips, her throat. The exposed line of it, the pulse point hammering beneath the skin. I press my lips to it and feel her entire body respond—a shudder that runs from her wrists to her feet, a sound that vibrates against my mouth.
"Tell me to stop," I say again. Against her skin. Giving her the out. The door she can walk through at any moment, because everything that happens from here has to be her choice.
Her fingers curl above my grip. Her body presses toward mine. Her voice comes from somewhere deep and raw:
"Don't stop."
Chapter 15 - Jess
His hands are around my wrists and my back is against his wall and I'm losing a war I didn't know I was fighting.
The wall is cold through the dress. His body is warm against mine. The contrast is disorienting—cold plaster, hot skin, his mouth on my throat doing something that's making my vision blur. His lips find the pulse point beneath my jaw and press, and the pressure sends a jolt through me that goes straight to the base of my spine.
My hands flex above me, testing his grip. Not trying to break free—testing. Feeling the boundary. His fingers are wrapped around both wrists, firm and sure, and the sensation of being held like this—arms up, body open, nowhere to hide—is the most terrifying thing I've ever felt.
And I don't want it to stop.
That's the part that undoes me. Not his mouth on my throat. Not the heat of him against me. The fact that some part of me—some deep, uncharted, traitorous part—has been waiting for this. For someone to hold me in place and sayI have youand mean it. For someone to take the weight I've been carrying since I was seven years old and sayput it down. I'll hold it for a while.
His free hand finds my hip. The same place he touched in the studio—the same proprietary weight, the same certainty—except now there's no workbench between us and no gap of air and his thumb traces a slow circle through the fabric of the dress that makes my hips press forward involuntarily.
"Come with me," he says. Against my skin. Not a question.
He releases my wrists. My arms come down and the blood rushes back into my fingers and I stand against the wall, breathing hard, while he steps back and looks at me. Waiting. Giving me room.
I could leave. Right now. The door is ten steps behind me and the elevator is down the hall and the subway is on the corner and I could be back in Brooklyn in forty minutes, in my apartment, in my bed, safe.
Safe and alone. Safe and untouched. Safe and the same as I was before, which is suddenly not enough.
I follow him.
The hallway is dim. The bedroom door is open. I cross the threshold and see the room—large, spare, a bed made with the military precision I'd expect from him. White sheets, dark headboard, nothing on the nightstands. No photographs. No clutter. A room designed for sleeping, not for living.
He turns to face me. We're standing on opposite sides of the bed and the lamplight carves his face into planes of light and shadow and he looks like something from a painting—dark and still and intent.
"I need you to understand something," he says. His voice is steady but there's a current underneath it, a voltage. "Everything that happens in this room, you choose. Every second. If you say stop, I stop. There's no ambiguity. There's no negotiation. The word is enough."
I nod.
