Chapter 5
Spade
The knife waited on the nightstand, catching the lamplight just so.
No point pretending it wasn’t part of why I was there.
The rest of the room was bare: a mattress on the floor, one flat pillow, gray sheets that still smelled like the plastic packaging.
I liked his apartment because it looked like he’d moved in an hour ago and didn’t plan to stay long.
No photos, no books, just the essentials.
The kind of place you could leave in a hurry.
“Come on, baby,” he pleaded, his hands on my hips, keeping me in place. I wasn’t planning on leaving. At least not yet.
“You gotta have patience, love.” Right. He was a fucking man and only had one thing on his mind—shooting his load and taking a nap. “There you go,” I said, moving around on his cock.
“Faster. Come on, move faster.”
Such an asshole.
His fingers dug deeper, trying to force a rhythm he couldn’t keep.
I shifted again and set the pace with my thighs, forearms braced against his chest, ink on my skin pressed to the bare scrub of his.
His body was tense and sweet, muscles straining under the old bruises I’d left last time.
He liked to be marked, or at least he told himself he did. It was a good story, so I played along.
“I wanna play,” I said.
“Whatever. Just don’t stop.”
I grabbed his chin. “Don’t you fucking come yet. Don’t do it.”
He knocked my hand away. “Fuck that,” he said.
He arched up, chasing me with his pelvis, gasping like he’d just realized he was allowed to make noise.
I kept my face blank, eyes fixed on his, giving him nothing.
Not pleasure, not approval, not even the illusion of control.
His mouth made shapes around my name, tried to say it, and swallowed the syllables, turning it into a guttural noise.
I bit the inside of my cheek and watched the lamplight stutter off the edge of the blade.
“Oh shit,” he moaned. “Hell yeah.”
“You know what happens if you come too early, Eric. Don’t do it!”
I let him get close. Let him think he was in charge, even as I steered everything: the way he moved, the pace, the temperature in the room.
I liked the feeling of sweat pooling between us, liked the sharp sting when he pinched the flesh above my ass, liked the tang of his breath as it got more ragged.
There was nothing romantic in it. Just bodies doing what they were wired to do.
“Jesus,” he said, voice raw. “Harder.”
I smiled with my teeth. “You sure?”
He nodded, head thrown back, neck stretched so the pulse flickered at his throat. If I were a monster, a vampire, I’d lean over and rip out his fucking jugular.
Instead, I leaned in and put my mouth to his ear. “Beg, you little bitch,” I said.
He whimpered. I laughed, low in my chest. If he heard it, he didn’t register it.
“Come on, Spade, harder you little cunt.” He loved that four-letter word but only used it when we were having sex, which wasn’t very often, at least in my opinion. Truth be told, I was ready to move on, find a man who could keep up with both my needs and my craziness.
I changed the angle, drove him into the mattress, and watched his face go slack.
He kept his hands at my hips, but his grip softened, more desperate now, less confident.
He was at the edge, the way people get when they realize they’ve given up more than they meant to.
I recognized it because I’d been there, too.
Not with him, but in other beds, other lives.
I heard the therapist in my ear, telling me nothing was my fault, that what happened to me as a child had shaped who I am today. Fuck that. I was shaping who I am today.
“Still close, my little bitch?” I asked.
“Almost there, cunt. Almost there.”
I slowed down, making him wait. He tried to buck his hips, but I locked him down, using my weight and leverage. He made a helpless noise, something between a sob and a curse. And he wondered why I was always calling him a little bitch.
I wished I could say he was one of those broken men who needed a good woman to fix him. But he wasn’t. He was a stand-in for the man whom I hoped would come into my life soon.
The knife glinted. I looked at it, then at him. He saw the shift in my eyes and tried to follow my gaze, but I snapped his chin back with two fingers.
“Eyes on me,” I said. “And don’t you fucking come, Eric.”
“Quit being a fucking tease and finish me.” Typical.
He obeyed. He always obeyed, keeping his eyes on me, the whites wide, the dark brown pupils dilating.
I let a long silence ride the tension, let him squirm under me, then I reached and palmed the knife’s handle. Cold steel, perfect fit. My heart didn’t change pace, but I felt the adrenaline in my teeth.
He saw it then—the knife in my hand, the small movement, the new variable in the equation. His eyes went wide, mouth open but silent.
“I didn’t agree to this shit,” he whined.
If it had been a dildo I was about to shove up his ass, he’d be grinning from ear to ear. But bring out a simple blade, and he’s a worse bitch than usual.
“Shut the fuck up,” I said.
I set the flat of the blade against his chest, just under the collarbone. He flinched. I pressed harder, not enough to cut, but enough that he felt the reality.
“What are you—” he said, but I cut him off by flexing my hips, drawing another moan out of him.
“I came to play,” I said. “Blow off some steam.”
I slid the blade down, slow and deliberate, to the center of his chest. The skin there was slick with sweat. I turned the edge and applied pressure, enough to leave a line. He froze, more animal than man, nostrils flaring.
“Get the fuck off me, Spade.” He squirmed like a little bitch. “I’m done with this shit.’
“Stay still,” I said. I thought about slapping him, something he actually enjoyed sometimes. I was guessing this was not one of those times.
Then he was so still I thought he’d stopped breathing. I drew a thin line, just enough to break the surface, right along his sternum. Red followed, lazy and thin. He shuddered.
“You—fuck—” he said, voice gone high. “What the fuck?”
“Stop moving before I really slice you up.”
I watched the blood bead up, then turned the knife and licked the flat side slowly. Copper, salt, and the taste of power.
He tried to push me off. Not with any real intent, just the instinct to get away.
“Enough,” he said gently. “Game’s over.”
“Don’t,” I said, one word, calm as a prayer. “Not another fucking word.”
He stared at me. There was a moment—a full, measurable second—where he didn’t know if he should scream or finish. That’s when I knew I’d gone too far for him.
He shoved, hard, palms to my ribs. I let it land, let myself slide off his lap, and hit the mattress. The knife dropped to the sheets.
He scrambled back, hands to his chest, eyes wild. He looked at the line of blood, then at me.
“You’re crazy,” he said. “You fucking—what is wrong with you?”
I didn’t answer. I picked up the knife, wiped it on the sheet, and set it back on the nightstand.
He stayed on the far edge of the mattress, breathing hard.
I stood, naked and calm, and pulled on my jeans. My hands didn’t shake.
“You liked it,” I said. “You need to give it a chance. I would have licked you clean.”
His laugh was a bark, sharp and full of fear.
“Get out,” he said. “I’m not your fucking pin cushion.”
I pulled on my shirt and boots. Picked up my leather jacket from the floor.
“You’re out of your fucking mind,” he yelled. It came out too loud, voice going brittle at the end. “You should fire that fucking shrink you’re seeing. Lunatic.”
He snatched a shirt from the floor, pressed it to his chest, then realized it was already stained from before and threw it down. Blood had started to bead in a neat line over his sternum, just like I’d planned.
“I said get out,” he tried again, voice quieter but no less shaky. He pointed at the door, then at me, then at the door again, as if repetition would make the universe rearrange itself.
“Yeah,” I said. “You mentioned it.”
He took one step around the bed, keeping his eyes glued to my hands. I had nothing in them. I didn’t need anything, though I considered grabbing the dildo from the nightstand drawer and shoving it down his throat.
“Seriously. I’m gonna call—” He didn’t finish. Maybe the right authority didn’t occur to him.
“The police, Eric? What’re you gonna tell them, that you were being a little bitch?” I chuckled. “I can certainly collaborate on that story.”
My hip throbbed from where he’d pushed me off, but I’d had worse. I straightened and squared my shoulders. We were the same height, almost exactly, but I outweighed him by muscle and scars.
He edged closer, arm out, like a traffic cop for one. “Leave. Now. I mean it. Cunt!”
I stepped into the reach of his arm. He was banking on my usual restraint, thinking I wouldn’t escalate. He didn’t know me as well as he liked to pretend.
I hit him with my right, knuckles flat, aiming for the sweet spot between cartilage and cheekbone. There was a sound, like a dry branch breaking, and a wash of blood that splattered my hand, his shirt, the floor. He reeled backward, hands up to his face, eyes wide and streaming.
“Fuck! Fuck, fuck, fuck,” he screamed. He stumbled into the dresser, knocked over an empty glass, and let it roll to the floor with a hollow thud.
He didn’t come at me again. He just pressed both hands to his nose, blood pouring out and down his fingers, pooling at his chin.
“You fucking psycho,” he choked. “What is wrong with you?”
I watched him the way you watch a car wreck—detached, counting the details.
“You’re violent. You’re fucking violent. I should’ve known. You’re just—” He shook his head, caught sight of himself in the mirror, and seemed to collapse in on himself. “You’re not even sorry, are you?”
“I’m definitely sorry, asshole,” I said. “Ever call me a cunt again, and I’ll slice your fucking throat.
The pain in my hip had gone dull and hollow. Everything else felt sharp.
“You’re fucking broken,” he said, voice pitching up as he wiped blood on the dresser and immediately stained his sleeve. “You’re—whatever happened to you—” He tried to find the words, failed, and went back to just bleeding on everything. “Nothing but a cunt now.”
“What did you say?” I pulled back to throw another punch, but stopped when he cowered.
I paused at the threshold. He looked at me like I was a nightmare that had refused to go away at dawn.
“Don’t,” I said. “Don’t you fucking call me that, you coward.”
He flinched again, half expecting another hit.
“Don’t what?” he spat through bloody fingers.
I smiled. “Don’t talk about me like you know what you’re seeing.”
I turned and left, the door slamming behind me hard enough to shake the frame. It rattled three times before settling.
In the silence, I could still hear his breathing. Short, shallow, desperate. And underneath it, the slow drip of blood onto the hardwood.
The hallway felt colder this time. I ran my hands over my jacket, found a flake of dried blood from an old night, and flicked it onto the floor.
Outside, the city waited, ugly and perfect.
There was nothing left to say.