LOGINRoman I woke before she did with her leg thrown over mine and the bar still down on the safe house door. Morning light cut thin through the blinds. Sloane’s hair was a dark mess on my chest. The bruise on her wrist had deepened to purple. My skull ached under the stitches. None of it mattered as much as the fact that she was here, breathing, naked against me, instead of in a chair in a blacked-out room by the river. My phone had twelve missed messages from the agency. I ignored them. Sloane stirred when I shifted. Her eyes opened slow. For a second she looked lost. Then she found my face and the tension left her body in a long exhale. “Still here,” she said. “Still here.” She climbed over me without warning. Straddled my hips. The sheet fell off her back. In the gray light she looked wrecked and hungry and done with careful. My cock hardened against the heat of her immediately. She felt it and rolled her hips once, dragging her wet cunt along the length of me. “Sloane.
Sloane Medical checked me over on the safe house couch while Roman stood against the wall and watched every movement like the EMTs might vanish with me again. Bruised wrist. Mild dehydration. No concussion. No broken skin that mattered. They wanted me at a hospital for observation. I refused. Roman backed the refusal with a tone that ended the argument. My father called while they were packing up. I told him I was safe and that Roman had gotten me out and that I would talk in the morning. I hung up before he could put a lawyer or a second detail on the line. When the door barred again behind the medical team, the unit went quiet. One lamp. Drawn blinds. A bag of spare clothes someone from the agency had left on the table. Roman’s blood had dried dark on his collar. The cut at his hairline was already closed with thin strips. He looked at me like he was still counting my limbs. “You should shower,” he said. “So should you.” “Sloane.” “I’m not fragile. I’m dirty and angry and I
Roman The lockdown lifted at 0140. Agency said the vehicle had moved on. Street cameras clean. Secondary took the hall. I told Sloane to sleep. She looked at me like she did not believe any of it and went to her room with the door left open the same way she always did. I sat in the guest room and watched the feeds until my eyes burned. I should have trusted the wrong silence less. At 0915 she had a confirmed appointment at her father’s foundation office across town. Low risk on paper. Controlled building. I drove. She sat in the passenger seat in a coat over a dark dress and did not push me for conversation. The almost-kiss in the hallway the night before sat between us unspoken. The surveillance flag sat beside it. I checked mirrors more than usual. The foundation’s private garage was supposed to be secured. It was not. I registered the wrong detail too late. A service van with a logo that did not match the building’s vendor list. A second man near the stairwell door who turne
Sloane I did not sleep. I lay in bed with the door open and touched my mouth in the dark like the kiss might still be sitting there. Roman’s hands. The wall against my back. The sound he made when I bit his lip. Every time I closed my eyes I was back in the living room with his thigh between mine and the job falling off him in real time. At 0100 I heard the guest room door open. Footsteps in the kitchen. Water. Then silence. He was awake too. Of course he was. I almost got up. Almost walked into that hallway and finished what secondary had interrupted. Pride and nerves held me still until the footsteps retreated and the guest room door closed again. Morning made everything worse and better at once. Roman was already in the kitchen when I came out. Shirt clean. Jacket on. Earpiece in. The professional version of him reconstructed overnight like the wall had never happened. He set a coffee on the counter without asking how I took it. He had learned anyway. “Secondary is on the hal
Roman I lasted until Saturday night. Secondary called in sick at 2100. The agency sent a replacement who could not arrive before midnight. That left me alone in Sloane Mercer’s apartment with three hours of open corridor and a client who had spent the week closing every inch of professional distance I tried to keep. She knew it too. I briefed her on the delay in the living room. She listened with her legs tucked under her on the couch and an expression that was too calm for the information. When I finished she nodded once and went to the kitchen. I took my position near the windows and watched the street because looking at her in that soft top with her hair down was becoming a liability I could measure in elevated heart rate. At 2140 she came back with two glasses of water and set one on the table near me. “You’re going to stand there until midnight.” “Yes.” “You can sit.” “I’m fine.” “You’re exhausting.” I did not answer. She stayed in the kitchen doorway and dr
Sloane By the end of the first week I knew his patterns better than he wanted me to. Roman woke before six without an alarm I could hear. He ran the building stairs when secondary had me covered. He drank his coffee black and standing. He checked the terrace latch every time he passed it, even if he had checked it ten minutes earlier. He spoke to my father’s chief in short, clipped updates and never let me hear the threat language if he could help it. When he looked at me it was brief, controlled, and always doing math I was not invited into. I started making the looks last longer on purpose. Tuesday I worked from the couch in shorts that rode up when I sat cross-legged. He stood at the windows and did not comment. I asked him questions that had nothing to do with exits. Favorite food. Whether he had siblings. What he did on nights when nobody was trying to take anyone. He gave one-word answers until I asked if he was allergic to conversation. Then he said, “I’m allergic to distra
LANA Morning light came through the curtains and hit me straight in the face. I lay there for a long minute before I dragged myself out of bed, legs still a little shaky from last night. My pussy felt tender when I walked. Every step reminded me of Dominic’s thick fingers stretching me open, the w
LANAThe door clicked open and I spun around so fast my head spun. Dominic stood there, fully dressed now in that same black t-shirt and grey sweatpants, but it didn’t make him any less dangerous. His eyes burned into me, heavy and sure, like he already knew exactly what my body was doing under the
LANAMom helped me carry my suitcase upstairs to my room. It was the same one I always stayed in during summers, nothing fancy but it felt like mine. She hugged me again at the door.“Get settled in, baby. Dinner will be ready soon.” She said and I nodded and closed the door behind her.I pulled ou
LANAI stared out the cab window as the Miami streets blurred past. The air conditioning was barely working, and my thighs stuck to the fake leather seat. I’d just landed from my dad’s place up north, and this was the start of another summer with Mom. Same routine every year since the divorce. I li







