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“Fuck. Fuck, that hurts. Don’t stop. Ivy, don’t you fucking stop,” I pant.

They don’t. The coverall scrapes my chest. The mask stays mashed to my mouth. Every stroke on my cock drags through the cut on my stomach and makes it burn worse. I am shaking. My knees scream on the tile. I try to fuck forward and the hand on my cock holds me still, then the fingers in my ass curl and I see white.

“Please. Please, I’m so fucking close. Use your mouth. Take the mask off and suck me. I need—”

A third finger forces in beside the other two. Stretch. Burn. I moan like I am being fucked and stabbed at the same time, because I am. Blood is on my thighs now. My cock jumps in the glove anyway, dripping, leaking, begging.

“I’m gonna come. I’m gonna come on your fucking hand. Don’t pull out.”

The fingers keep sliding. In. Out. Filthy. Deep. The fist on my cock finally strokes me the way I need it, fast and mean, and the sound I make is not a word.

Then the second cut is lower. Deeper. It takes my knees out from under me. The blade stays in this time. The fingers stay in me. The mask stays on my mouth.

I come like that. Heat. Wet. A broken sound against the white face. My blood smears the cheek of the mask.

I try to kiss the mask. I grab at the coverall. Two fingers get under the edge and lift it a little.

Not off. Just a gap. Soft skin. Dark lashes. One eye looking back at me. I know that eye.

“You,” I whisper.

I hit the floor on my side. The tile is cold and hard against my shoulder. My hands slip off my stomach and I cannot put them back. The cut burns. The lower one burns worse. My ass still feels open, empty now, and my cock is wet against my thigh like the orgasm did not understand I am dying.

I try to breathe. It comes out wrong. Thick. I taste blood.

The kitchen light is still on down the hall for a woman who is almost here. I want to tell her not to come in. I cannot get the words out.

The mask tilts over me. Close. Listening to the sound I make when there is not much sound left.

“Pretty when you bleed.”

My vision goes at the edges. The white face is the last thing that stays. Then even that pulls away, and the copy room goes dark, and I am not in it anymore.

8

Ivy Chen

Thursday, October 30th. 11:41 p.m.

The car park is empty. One light. No other cars. I pull in under the light and sit with the engine off.

Eleven forty-one.

Kit said he would leave the kitchen light on. That was the plan. I was coming to take him home.

I check my mouth in the mirror. Wipe the old lipstick off with my thumb. Put on the one he likes, the dark one he always gets on his teeth and never complains about. I undo one more button on my shirt and look at the line it makes. Undo a second, then do that one back up. I am not walking through Rhys Preswood’s lobby with my bra on show. I am walking into Kit’s kitchen with enough of me out that he will forget he is tired.

I pull my skirt higher on my thighs and leave it there. I take my hair down and shake it out. I rub perfume on my throat and on the inside of my wrist and then, because I know him, lower, where his mouth goes first when he is in a hurry. I look like a woman who came to get laid. That is the point.

I text him.

Me: I’m downstairs. Coffee is getting cold. So is my mouth. Come on.

Nothing.

I take a picture of the open button and send that, too. Then a second one, lower, just enough thigh that he will know I did it on purpose.

Me: Kit. Don’t make me come up there looking like this for nothing.