Her.

She was drinking a martini, relatively dirty, nothing crazy. Another writing conference, dry as church dust, and the most interesting part of it was clinking against the glass in my hand.

I bought her another when I went to get my own, and she didn’t say thank you. Just pulled me with her eyes from my end of the bar to hers with an intensity that caught me off guard; I edged in between the crush of people on both sides, my hips brushing her knees as I stood too close.

This wasn’t my first rodeo. Most women are a possibility if I want them to be, although the ones that catch my eye are usually a bit more …aware of the game than this one was. Or maybe she just didn’t care. She wasn’t trying, that was for sure. Just a black cashmere turtleneck tucked into black pinstripe trousers with a slim belt. Her lips were a perfect slick of red on an otherwise bare face, her hair wild and dark around her shoulders as if tossed by the wind in a still room.

Her eyes swept slowly from my face to my belt. I watched her do it. She had nothing about her I was used to; not one second of hesitation, or question, or polite deference. She looked at me until she was done, then met my eyes. “So,” she said, “Ask me what you really want to know.”

Cut to my wrists crossed over my head and held hard against the wall, her thigh between mine, her breath on my neck. A sliver of light from the bathroom sliced through the dark expanse of room I hadn’t even seen. She’d unlocked the door, dropped the key on the entry table, and shoved me against the wall before I could draw a breath. My hands slid up her back for just a second before I felt her smile and the back of my wrists hit the wall above my head. She held them there with the heel of her hand, but it wasn’t that that was keeping me against that wall.

It was the sudden absence of choice. And the realization that I didn’t want it back.

Want to read the rest? Ask me nicely;)
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