Chapter 26
TWENTY-SIX
Kit
When Zia did precisely as I instructed without a single word of protest, my brain didn't just stutter.
It blue-screened. It was a physical sensation, an abrupt, jarring trip in the groove of a scratched vinyl record, a violent k-k-k-kick that slammed the needle right back to the start of the measure.
The world skipped, and I was left standing in the silence of my own shock.
Then, just as quickly, I rebooted. A system restart, cold and clean.
But I didn't come back as a man. A man would have crossed the three feet of worn carpeting that separated us, dropped to his knees, and begged for a taste of the scent that was suddenly flooding the enclosed space.
The sharp, electric tang of neon citrus and ozone, frosted grapefruit zest under high voltage, was a physical siren's call.
A man would have drowned in it. A man would have let his own instincts, the ones that screamed to protect, to soothe, to touch, take the wheel.
I came back online as a utility. A service animal. A finely calibrated tool to be used until the specific, agreed-upon job was complete.
"Copy," I said, and the voice that emerged from my throat was a stranger's. It was lower than the sub-bass on our heaviest track, a baritone scraped from the very bottom of a well. Absolute zero. "I'm narrating all actions. You tell me if you want pace changes, faster or slower."
I didn't dare look at Alfie. I didn't need to. I could hear him, a sharp, choked-off intake of breath that sounded like he’d been sucker-punched in the gut.
I could feel the sheer heat radiating off Euan where he stood ramrod-straight by the door, his stillness so profound it seemed to vibrate, like a bass string plucked and then immediately muted.
My entire world contracted, my focus narrowing until it was only the few feet of space between me and her.
I locked my eyes on Zia’s face, tracing the way the dim indigo bus lights carved shadows beneath her cheekbones.
To keep myself honest, I clasped my hands tightly behind my back, linking my fingers until the knuckles burned.
Parade rest. A cage for my own hands. If I didn't lock them away, they were going to do something that would breach the very contract we were here to test.
"We're starting," I rumbled, pitching the words to carry over the low hum of the tyres on the motorway. "Right hand. Lift it."
Zia blinked, her focus so absolute it was like witnessing a camera lens pulling a subject into sharp relief. Her breath hitched, just a tiny, audible fraction. She lifted her hand. It was steady.
"Good," I murmured, the word tasting like dark-roast espresso and scorched sugar on my tongue. "Bring it down to the waistband of your jeans. Don't unbutton. Just rest it there. Fingers flat. Feel the metal of the button under your palm."
She obeyed, her hand lowering to press against the cool denim. Her fingers brushed the worn fabric. Her eyes, wide and dark and utterly transfixed, never left mine. She looked trapped, but not by me. She was trapped by the sound, by the frequency of my voice pinning her in place.
"Protocol check," I said, keeping the rhythm of my speech steady, slow, intentionally heavy like a four-four beat on the kick drum. "Are we still on a green light?"
"Green," she whispered, the word barely a ghost in the quiet.
"Sorted. Pop the button. One clean movement. Thumb and forefinger."
Pop.
The sound was a gunshot. It detonated in the small space, louder than the engine, louder than the hurricane of blood rushing in my ears. It was the sound of a seal breaking.
"Now the zipper," I commanded, my voice dropping even lower. "Pull it down. Slow. I want to hear the teeth separate."
Her fingers found the small metal tab. She pulled. Zzzzzzip. A clean, metallic rip through the fabric of the night.
From the corner, Alfie made a noise that sounded like a whimper being throttled at birth. I clamped down on the instinct to check on him, to offer a grounding word. He wasn't the mission. My world was the three feet of space between me and the engineer on the bunk.
"Hand inside," I said, deliberately putting all the gravel of a rain-soaked Manchester alley into the vowels. "Find the skin. Past the elastic of your waistband. Tell me the contrast. Cold hand, warm skin. Tell me the temperature you find."
"Hot," she gasped out. Her head fell back against the padded grey wall of the bunk with a soft thud. The little red light on her phone’s audio recorder, placed carefully on the mattress beside her, blinked like a tiny, malevolent eye in the dimness.
"Hot," I repeated, my tone pure confirmation, a databank logging an entry. "Copy that. Now slide down. Find the center of all that heat. Don't touch the nerve bundle yet. Just cup yourself. Let me see you hold the heat."
She did as I said. Her hand disappeared into the dark denim of her jeans. She bit down on her bottom lip, hard, a flash of white teeth in the gloom.
"Pressure now," I instructed, my eyes tracking the involuntary jerk of her hips. "Flat palm. Heavy. Like you're grinding it into the bone. A slow, clockwise circle. Start the motion."
She moved. A wrecked, wet groan tore from her throat, a sound that bypassed my ears and went straight through my chest, vibrating along my ribs.
"That's it," I crooned, letting a sliver of praise slip into the command structure.
It was a calculated risk. I wasn't just giving orders anymore; I was a producer at a mixing desk, turning up the gain, tuning the drum of her pulse.
"Keep that rhythm. One, two. One, two. A heavy hand is a good hand. "
"Kit," she choked out, my name a ragged thing.
"I'm here. I'm the wall. I'm the structure," I promised.
"You're the motion. You just follow the beat.
" I took a single, deliberate step closer, invading her visual field but keeping my hands locked behind my back until my shoulders screamed in protest. "Find the slick with your index finger.
Focus there. Bring it up and circle the nerve cluster.
A small, circular motion right on the nub. Gentle at first. Just wake it up."
She shuddered violently, a full-body tremor. Her hips bucked up off the mattress. The scent in the room spiked, a violent, almost painful surge of frosted grapefruit zest peeling under high voltage, sharp and clean and achingly electric.
"Harder," she begged, the word a raw command of her own.
"Permission to modulate?" I asked, forcing the clinical term out.
"Yes. Fucking… Yes."
"Good girl," I growled.
The effect was instantaneous. It was like I’d reached out and severed the strings on a marionette. Her eyes, which had been locked on mine, rolled back into her head. Her spine arched so sharply it looked like it might snap.
"That's it," I urged, leaning into the space between us, pouring my voice over her like wet concrete. "Harder now. Thumb only. Wreck it for me. You take that friction. You earn it. You take exactly what I'm telling you to take."
"Kit, Kit," she sobbed, a mantra of my name breaking apart on her lips.
"You ride it," I commanded, my voice the only anchor in the storm. "Don't you dare stop. I’ve got you. I’m holding the structure. You just fall."
And she fell.
She came apart completely, a shattered cry ripping from her throat as her hand worked frantically against her own body, driven by my words.
She curled in on herself, wrist bent, body shaking with frantic, sobbing breaths, drowning in the sound of my voice while I stood there, a whisper away, motionless as a statue carved from granite.
I watched her climax. I never broke eye contact with her body. I watched the flush climb her chest, a dark stain in the low light. I watched the way her toes curled inside her beat-up socks.
And I didn't touch her. I didn't move a single fucking muscle.
I held the line.
When the last of the tremors finally stilled, she slumped back against the bunk pillows, chest heaving, a fine sheen of sweat beading on her temples and upper lip.
The silence that fell in the bus was deafening, heavier and more absolute than any sound.
Then, from the corner, a heavy, muffled thud.
I risked a glance over my shoulder. Alfie had slid all the way down the wall and was now biting hard into the sleeve of his ridiculous pink faux-fur coat, his knuckles white where he gripped the fabric, clearly trying to keep from screaming.
Euan had his head tipped back, staring at the ceiling as if the wiring diagrams were visible there, his hands clenched into tight fists at his sides.
He looked like he was doing complex quantum calculus in his head to keep his heart from exploding out of his chest.
With her free, trembling hand, Zia reached out and tapped the screen of her phone.
Recording Stopped.
She looked up at me, through me. Her eyes were glassy, pupils blown so wide they’d all but consumed the irises.
"Good girl," she whispered, her voice rough, testing the shape of the words.
My knees nearly buckled. It was all I could do to keep from folding in on myself.
"Variable isolated," I managed to rasp, my own voice completely shot, scraped raw. "Trigger identified."
"Yeah," she breathed, a shaky, exhausted exhale. "Trigger… identified."
She reached for the marker pen on the bunk’s edge. Turning to the whiteboard mounted on the wall, her hand shook so badly the letters she wrote were jagged, fractured things.
Under the heading VOICE PROTOCOL, she scrawled:
TRIGGER: "Good Girl"
EFFECT: Total System Override.
She capped the pen with a decisive click and dropped it.
"I need water," she said, her voice just a threadbare whisper. "And… five minutes. Nobody talk."
"Copy," I breathed.
I forced my legs to turn, to move away. Alfie looked up at me, his eyes pure, dilated black holes of secondhand shock. He mouthed one word at me.
Bastard.
But he was smiling. It was a terrified, awestruck, holy-fucking-shit kind of smile.
I stumbled toward the kitchenette alcove. My hands, finally released from their prison behind my back, were trembling so hard I nearly dropped the kettle.
I had just talked the woman I was undeniably, irrevocably falling for into complete oblivion without lifting a single finger. For a split second, I felt like the most powerful man in the world.
And I needed a cold shower immediately, or I was going to spontaneously combust.