7 - Isa
The knife presses against Adrian’s throat, and my body betrays me completely.
Heat floods through me the instant his hands cage me against the bar.
Not fear. That would make sense. This is something else, something that starts low in my belly and spreads like wildfire through every nerve.
His body radiates warmth where it almost touches mine, and for one horrifying half-second, I want to drop the knife.
Want to let the blade fall and see what he'd do with his hands braced on either side of me, what that look in his eyes promises.
The German steel stays steady at his throat even as my pulse races.
Three inches of blade that could open his artery with one motion, and I'm thinking about surrender.
About what it would feel like to stop fighting for once, to let someone else take control, to let him take whatever he was about to take when he pinned me here.
My control slams down hard. I hate myself instantly for the wetness gathering between my thighs while I hold a knife to a man's throat.
This is not who I am. I don't surrender.
I don't submit. I survive by maintaining perfect control over every variable, and the biggest variable is currently the ache in my body that wants what I can't let myself want.
Adrian's breath warms my face, quick and shallow. The edge of my blade has drawn a bead of blood where it kisses his skin. He should be backing away, apologizing, doing anything except leaning closer like he wants to test how sharp it really is.
The knowledge pulses through me with my racing heartbeat.
One motion, maybe two seconds before he'd bleed out.
I've cut men before, know exactly how much pressure it takes to go from threat to promise to corpse.
My hand doesn't shake. My knife doesn't waver.
Behind us, the Baccarat crystal behind the bar catches light like diamonds.
All this beauty, and I'm thinking about blood.
But underneath the lethal competence, underneath the cold calculation of angles and arteries, that heat keeps building.
Because his eyes aren't showing fear. They're showing something raw and hungry that matches the thing I'm trying to crush in my chest. Like he knows exactly what my body is doing even while I hold death to his throat.
I hate him for seeing it. Hate myself more for feeling it.
"The patron," I say, my voice scraped flat. "You lost your mind over a drunk patron who was already leaving."
Adrian doesn't move his hands from the bar, but something shifts in his face.
His shoulders roll back first, that easy posture returning.
Then his mouth softens at the corners. By the time his eyes warm again, I'm watching a magic trick.
The dangerous stranger disappearing beneath the friend I thought I knew.
"He was bothering you." His voice comes out rough, then smooths. "I just wanted to help."
"I didn't need help." Each word deliberate, emotionless. Full sentences spent like currency while my body still burns from his proximity. "I had it handled. I always have it handled."
In my peripheral vision, I catch Gunner moving through the crowd, his hand brushing his hip where his gun sits. The reminder of where we are, what world we inhabit, should cool the heat. It doesn't.
"I know." Adrian swallows, and I have to angle the knife slightly to avoid cutting him deeper. "I know you did. I'm sorry."
The apology means nothing. We both know it. We both know something else happened here, something that had nothing to do with helping.
"Move your left hand," I tell him. "Slowly."
He does, lifting it away from the bar with exaggerated care. Then the right. Each movement careful, choreographed, two people pretending we're having a different conversation than the one our bodies are screaming.
"Step back."
He takes one step. Then another. The distance helps but not enough. I can still smell his cologne. Tobacco with something citrus underneath. Still feel the ghost of his heat where he almost pressed against me.
I lower the knife slowly, keeping it visible between us. A reminder. A barrier.
"That can't happen again," I say.
"Of course." The Adrian everyone knows is almost back now.
That easy warmth, that practiced charm. "Just looking out for the family, you know?
Sometimes I get…" He pauses, and for just a second, his expression reminds me of the soldiers who sometimes drink here.
Men who've done things that would make God himself look away.
Then it's gone, and he's Adrian again, but my skin still prickles with recognition of something predatory. "Protective."
The word lands wrong. There's weight to it, possession maybe, that makes my instincts prickle.
But then he's smiling that familiar smile, shoulders relaxing into his usual casual pose, and I file the flicker away.
Something to examine later when my thighs aren't still pressed together, when I'm not still fighting the urge to put the knife away and pull him back against me.
"We should both get back to work," he says, like nothing happened. Like he didn't just pin me to a bar. Like I didn't just want him to. "Long night ahead."
"Yes." I slide the knife back into my boot, the metal still warm from my grip. "We should."
He turns to go, then pauses. "Thank you," he says, and I don't know what he's thanking me for. Not killing him? Not asking questions? Not naming the thing that just broke between us?
"For what?"
"For reminding me about boundaries." The lie sits so easily in his mouth. "I'll be more careful."
We separate into the noise of the club, both pretending we believe him, both knowing we're lying by omission. The mask is perfect now. He's Adrian the charmer, Adrian the host, Adrian who makes everyone feel special. But I caught that flicker of something else. Something dark.
I watch him work the room for another hour, bringing warmth to every table, before he makes his excuses and disappears upstairs to his apartment. Unusual for him to leave early, but after what just happened, maybe the distance is better for both of us.
I motion to Carlos to cover the bar. Just five minutes, I mouth, and slip toward the back hallway, finding an empty storage alcove where no one will look for me.
The alcove door closes behind me, and my body finally does what it's been threatening to do since the moment Adrian's hands hit the bar.
The space smells like cardboard and the industrial cleaner we use on the floors.
Cases of liquor stacked against one wall, and I press my back against the other, legs shaking, breath coming in sharp gasps I couldn't allow myself out there.
The ache between my thighs has become unbearable.
My underwear is soaked through, and I hate myself for it.
Hate that my body responded to being caged, controlled, almost owned.
I try to think about anything else. Inventory counts, tomorrow's deliveries, the pattern of scars on my hands from years of bar work. But my body won't be redirected. It wants what it wants with a ferocity that frightens me.
The fantasy surfaces before I can stop it: Adrian following through on whatever darkness I saw in his eyes.
His hands on my wrists, holding them above my head.
His weight pressing me into the bar, into the wall, into surrender.
Letting go of the constant vigilance, the perfect control, the exhausting effort of managing every variable.
Just for once, letting someone else decide. Letting him decide.
Control means no surprises. No variables. No chances for the people I care about to end up… No. But that's exactly it. Surrender means chaos, and chaos means death. It always has.
My hand slides between my legs with the inevitability of gravity, finding the place where I'm already swollen and aching, my body so far ahead of my mind it's humiliating.
The first touch through my underwear makes me bite my lip hard enough to taste copper.
I press my hand over my mouth to muffle any sound that might escape.
This is wrong. This is the opposite of everything I've built myself into.
I don't surrender control. I don't submit.
I don't fantasize about men pinning me down and taking what they want.
Except apparently I do, because my fingers are moving faster now, circling my clit while I imagine Adrian's hands instead of mine.
In the fantasy, he doesn't ask permission. Doesn't hesitate. He takes what he wants and makes me like it, makes me beg for it, makes me forget that control is the only thing keeping me safe.
The orgasm builds fast, almost violent. I press harder over my mouth to muffle the sound as I come, my whole body shaking with the force of it. For a few seconds, everything goes white and quiet and simple.
Then the shame crashes in.
I just got myself off in a storage alcove thinking about Adrian controlling me. About giving up the one thing I can't afford to lose. My fingers are still wet. Proof of how completely I've betrayed myself.
I clean up mechanically, hate burning in my chest. This isn't who I am. This isn't who I can afford to be. Men like Adrian, warm and charming and suddenly dangerous, they're exactly the kind of variable that gets people killed. That gets people you love killed.
But my body doesn't care about logic or safety or the lessons written in scar tissue. It wants what it wants, and apparently what it wants is the opposite of everything I've trained myself to be.
Later, the bar is finally quiet, just me wiping down surfaces and Juliet perched on her usual stool again like she's grown roots there.
The humidity from outside seeps in every time the door opens, making everything feel heavy and close.
Most nights I'd have kicked her out by now.
Tonight, I'm grateful for the distraction from what happened in the storage alcove.