I need to break something. Anything. Just to feel like I’m in control again. To bend the world back to my will before I allow her to finish what she’s starting—before she breaks me.
I grip the steering wheel a little tighter as we roll down the two-lane road toward my next stop, irritation simmering under my ribs.
If I’d told my mom I was too busy to drive her tonight, if Drake hadn’t decided tonight was the perfect night to go out instead of working on the business plan with me, maybe I wouldn’t be in this situation. If I’d been at the table, tightening projections and refining the presentation, I wouldn’t be here. I wouldn’t bedriving through the night with temptation in my passenger seat and a storm brewing in my head.
“Where are we headed?” she asks like a restless kid.
“Dropping something off to a friend,” I say.
That should’ve been the end of it. Should’ve.
But then she reaches for my radio.
Smack.
I swat her hand away without thinking.
She gasps like I slapped her soul. “I know you didnotjust put your hands on me!”
“And I knowyoudid not just put your hands on a Black man’s radio.”
“All you had to do was say stop, or move, oranything! You didn’t have to touch me!”
“Like you’d actually listen to anything I said? I asked you to be quiet and you couldn’t even manage that for five minutes.”
She folds her arms, eyes narrowing with challenge and something far more dangerous—mischief.
Eyes on the road, Eli.
“All I’m saying is, if you were going to put your hands on me…”
Her voice dips into something sultry, almost teasing, as her fingers drag slowly down the center of her chest, skimming the curve of her cleavage like she’s trying to short-circuit my brain. “There areotherplaces you could’ve touched. Orhit, even.”
She can’t be real. There’s just no way this is my life right now.
My mother raised me to respect women—to listen to them and never silence them. I’ve never believed that love and roses are required to sleep with someone, or even to fuck them senseless.
I’m just a man who knows himself. And I know where I tend to lose control.
Because once something catches my attention—once someone does—it stops being casual. It stops being simple. Myfocus sharpens and curiosity turns intentional. I don’t chase recklessly, but I don’t half-step either.
I usually engage with women who want the escape without the reality of staying. High-powered women who flirt with the fantasy of disappearing off the grid, only to realize after a few days that the quiet unnerves them. They realize this life isn’t something they can, or want to, hold on to.
That’s where it’s supposed to end.
If I’m not careful, though, I won’t know when to stop. That’s when things tilt—when interest turns into something heavier.
That’s how it always starts. Attention turns into attachment, and care deepens into surrender. It isn't about possession or control. It’s just too much, too fast. It's an intensity that asks for more than most people are prepared to give—or release.
It’s a pattern I know well.
And even though Max is standing right in front of me, daring me to give her everything I usually reserve for women who seem like they can handle it—handle me—I’m not convinced I’d survive her if I did.
She pokes, she prods, she pushes every damn button I didn’t even know I had. And the worst part? Some sick part of me wants her to keep doing it.
How the hell is this pint-sized seductress having this effect on me?
Who the hellisshe?
