I freeze, my eyes squeezing shut as a flurry of ice and heat blows through me.
Something skitters on the floor behind me like someone kicked a tool and it rolled, bounced.
A murder weapon?
What am I thinking? I open my eyes.
It is Alex, right? But I'm here right at seven, not before. It would have taken me ten minutes to reach the ground floor, walk to Forty-ninth Street, enter, and end up here.
He said after.
After.
Is he playing a rape game?
I swallow hard, the words "blue banana" bouncing in my head.
I don't think I want to play at rape.
"A-Alex?" I ask, my voice thin. "Is that you?"
No one moves, no one speaks, and I almost turn.
Almost.
But instead, I gulp in air and keep walking, one foot in front of the other to the now dark office.
I reach the door, and as my eyes grow accustomed, I notice a steel desk, a lamp, and above, the ever-present construction light in a cage. Very much off.
My heart thumps as the footsteps start, and I say his name once more. "Alex?"
He doesn't answer.
Hell, maybe I'm in over my head. I don't want this...do I? What if it isn't him? What if he changed his mind and texted me and I never checked and?—
A hand comes down on my shoulder, and there is a rose and smoke scent about him. It is almost like Enzo.
It smells expensive. And...how does he know what perfume Enzo wears?
I shut my eyes for a moment. The report from Silas.
And my fear bottoms out and levels, excitement rising in its stead.
"You know your safe word?"
"Y-yes," I answer, barely more than the whisper he uses.
I'm pressed against him, and it is not for intimacy, it is so I don't turn and look at him, and I know, in the sane part of me, I should run.
"Use it anytime, even if I'm inside you, and I will stop. Got it?"
I nod, and the sane part of me is drowned out by my wants, needs, the impulses driving me hard. "Yes."
"Good girl. Don't turn around."
He steps back, and even if I wanted to disobey, he wraps a blindfold over my eyes and ties it in place, blinding me in the dark.
A burst of hysterical laughter breaks free.
