Page 111 of Safe Word

Her smile faltered, uncertainty flashing across her face. ‘What is it?’

‘It’s intense,’ I said, thinking about the details. ‘Maybe too intense.’ – it was perfect, but I needed a cover.

Her eyes narrowed slightly, the green-blue so dark in the low light they might as well have been onyx-black. ‘Too intense for who? The readers? Or you?’

The challenge in her voice struck a nerve with irritation and thrill in equal parts, but I masked whatever stirred inside me.

‘It’s not about me. I’m just saying it might need a lighter touch. Something to balance the rawness.’

Her lips pressed into a thin line, and she sat straight in her chair. ‘D’Angelo,’ she started, as always when she was slightly peeved. Damn, I loved that.

‘The characters aren’t in a place for softness. They’re broken. The intensity is the point – it’s what they need to feel alive again.’

The words resonated in me more than they should have. Not because I disagreed, but because I understood them too well.

I thought of Scarlett again – how she’d let me take her apart without question. She hadn’t been giving herself to me; she had been vanishing into the chaos we’d created. But even as I held her in my mind, it was Paula I was watching now – Paula, who didn’t vanish. Paula, who faced the chaos.

I’d met my masked beauty as Ghost; someone faceless, someone who didn’t carry the weight of Cain D’Angelo’s failures and sins. The mask had given me the freedom to act on the darker thoughts I’d kept buried, to lose myself in a version of me I hadn’t fully understood. With Scarlett, I had been able to push the boundaries, giving in to the part of me that had craved not just intimacy but total surrender. And she’d let me. She hadn’t just allowed my demons; she had embraced them. Fuck, she had fed them, had let them grow until they’d burned through every rational thought. With anyone else, it would have been too much; too cruel, too reckless. But she’d never asked me to stop.

Paula was right: sometimes intensity was the only thing keeping one alive. Sometimes, one didn’t need tenderness or comfort. One needed the pain to remind them that they could still feel.

The characters had needed that raw, brutal release to feel alive again, just like I had needed Scarlett.

But the parallel twisted something inside me, leaving a bitter taste in my mouth. Because while the characters in our book might find redemption in their desperation, I wasn’t sure I ever could.

As her words took root in me, for a moment, I couldn’t find a response. Because I wasn’t just thinking about the characters any more. I was thinking about her. About the way she spoke with such certainty, as if she wasn’t just creating those scenes but living them, pulling the chaos and desperation straight from her own soul.

Where did that inspiration come from? Was she, like me, hiding pieces of herself in the shadows of her writing? Was she channelling her pain, the damage, into these stories the same way I did with Scarlett?

The possibility twisted deep inside me. What if she was like me? What if she needed those intense moments, that raw, visceral escape, to quiet the noise in her head?

The thought was both terrifying and intoxicating. Was she, in the privacy of her own time, seeking the same release, the same fleeting sense of control that I chased with Scarlett? And if so… could she find the same solace in me, as I have found in her?

Something clamped down on my lungs at the surge of forbidden thoughts – the sudden, aching desire to cross the line, to see what it would be like to touch her, to bind her, to bruise her in a way she would like. To know her in ways I wasn’t sure I deserved.

I’d already started letting Scarlett go. But Paula was still here.

My gaze lingered on her lips for just a second too long, my mind betraying me with images I had no right to conjure.

I shook my head, dragging myself back to reality, forcing the thought away before it could spread and infect.

This was Paula. My assistant, my equal in creation – not someone I could allow myself to ruin. Not someone I could afford to lose.

The change in Paula was subtle at first, but then the glaze over her eyes became unmistakable. Her focus faltered, her movements slowing as though the world around her had dulled.

She tilted slightly to the side, blinking rapidly. My hand shot out, catching her shoulder to steady her.

‘Paula?’ I tried, keeping my voice calm even as alarm bells rose at the back of my mind.

I clocked the bottle. It couldn’t have been the beer – she’d barely drunk it.

My gut twisted with unease, my instincts screaming that something was wrong.

Her lids fluttered in slow motion, her brow knitting in confusion as she gripped the edge of the table.

‘I… I don’t feel right,’ she murmured, her voice soft and slightly slurred. Her gaze swept the tabletop, her frown tightening.

My pulse kicked into overdrive. I snatched the beer bottle from beneath her and lifted it to my nose. The scent was ordinary – just hops and barley. Nothing bitter or metal, no telltale signs of tampering. But the way she started swaying, her lips parting slightly as if struggling to form words—