Chapter 7 #2
No doubt about it now. I can’t deny it. It’s him.
My breath catches, sharp and uneven. It can’t be, but I’d know that voice anywhere.
The rough velvet, danger wrapped in silk.
I don’t say it. He doesn’t either. We let it hang there, unspoken.
Maybe we both want to see if the other will admit it first.
“You sound…” My words falter, but I find them again. “Different than I imagined.”
“You’ve been imagining me?” His tone dips, dark amusement curling around every syllable.
“Yes.” It slips out before I can stop it. A breathless confession.
He doesn’t push. He doesn’t need to. The silence between us is heavy, electric, threaded with the memory of him brushing his lips against my cheek in that grocery aisle. I’m almost certain he’s smiling on the other end of the line. A slow, dangerous smile I can feel without seeing.
“Good,” he finally says, his voice quieter now, almost a whisper. “I want you thinking about me.”
“Are you a bad man?” The question slips from my lips before I can swallow it. His intensity scares me, but not in a fear for my life type of way. I am not afraid of him. I’m afraid of what wanting him will do to me.
“Yes,” Cassius says. I can hear things in the background, light music maybe, but I can’t make anything out. “I will never lie to you when you ask me a direct question.”
“So you’ll lie to me when I don’t ask?”
“I may not always offer information right away, but I hope you can see the difference.” His voice is calm and measured.
“What are you doing?”
“Just got home,” Cassius answers. “I had a job run late.”
I pull my phone away from my ear and check the time. “At two in the morning?” I ask, struggling to reconcile his world with my own.
“Sin City, Lindy girl. Business happens at all hours here.”
“Well, I work normal business hours and I should try to get some sleep.” I use my words as a gentle reminder of the divide between our lives.
I don’t know why he keeps talking to me, but I know that whatever world he’s in there’s no place for someone like me.
I’m the opposite of dangerous and brave.
But, I muster up some bravery anyway because before we hang up I have to know, “Why did you call me?” I barely croak out.
“Because texting you all the things I know about you would take too long,” he says, and then, softer, “and because you promised me one outrageous question if I behaved.”
My pulse trips. “You remembered.”
“I remember everything about you,” he says, low. “And I’ve been thinking about your answer to this question all day.”
“Let’s have it.” I brace for anything. With this man it could be anything from my favorite snack to the last time I made myself come. Heat climbs my neck. Thank God he can’t see me.
“Will you touch yourself to the sound of my voice?” His question lands quiet and lethal, like a blade set gently on velvet.
“Will I… or have I?” I hear myself ask before I can think better of it.
A soft laugh ghosts down the line. “Well, now I want to know both.”
“I only agreed to one outrageous question.”
“What if I promise to behave tomorrow, too?” There’s a smile in it. He knows exactly what he’s doing.
I can’t help laughing. “I haven’t heard your voice before today, so no, I haven’t. But thoughts of you is another story…”
“And now?”
“Are you asking me to?”
“That’s what makes it outrageous.” A beat. “Only if you want to, Lindy girl.”
Want. The word tilts the room.
“Yes.”
His inhale is slow, careful. “Leave your light on. I like knowing you can see the shape of what I’m asking.” Another breath. “Touch the inside of your wrist, where you wrote my name. I want you thinking of that.”
My fingers find the spot. “Okay.”
“Now the hollow at your throat.” A pause. “That’s where I start when I finally get you in front of me.”
Heat slides under my skin. “Okay.”
“Good girl,” he says. “Now lower. Your palm over your heartbeat. Feel it? That’s mine right now. Breathe for me. In… and out. Slow.”
I match him. The room narrows to his voice, to being seen even without him in the room.
“Tell me where your hand is.”
“My stomach.”
“Lower,” he murmurs. “Over your hips. Feel the weight of your own hand. We’re not rushing. This is me learning you.”
I do as he says, a shiver slipping down my spine.
“Now,” he says, “slip your hand under your panties. Just lay your fingers there. Don’t move yet.”
I bite my lip. “You’re mean.”
“I’m a very patient man,” he counters.
A small sound breaks from my throat. I didn’t know I could sound like that.
“That one,” he says, wrecked around the edges now. “That sound is only mine.”
“Tell me,” he says, rougher now. “What you want.”
The fan hums. The clock ticks. I let the quiet stretch until it thins. “You,” I say. “Do this with me.”
A beat, then a mumbled, “Fuck.” I listen as he undoes his belt, hear his zipper slide down. “All right, Lindy girl.”
“Tell me how.”
“Slow first.” His voice drops a register, steady as a metronome. “Breathe with me—four in, six out. Good. Now…just enough to notice.”
My sheets rasp when I move. The mattress gives the smallest protest. I don’t narrate. I don’t need to. He hears it. “That’s it,” he murmurs. “Stay right there. Don’t rush.”
I hear him, too. The drag of a cuff against skin. A breath that isn’t quite even. A tiny click, like he’s braced a knuckle on the nightstand. I picture the loosened tie, the throat I’ve only seen in a cropped photo, the way his control sounds when it frays.
“Tell me what changes,” he says.
“It’s building, tingling” I manage. “Everywhere.”
“Where is everywhere?”
“Don’t make me say it.”
“Say it, Lindy.” A rough exhale. “More pressure, but not faster. Hold it there.”
I follow, and the world narrows to little noises. My breath catching, his going ragged for a second before he reins it back. “Pussy,” I whisper, sudden and brave. “Cassius, I want to hear you.”
A pause that feels like a shiver. Then he lets me. The sound he makes isn’t loud, but it lands low in me, heat answering heat. “Good girl,” he says, reverent, as if the words might break.
“Cassius,” I say, because I need his name in my mouth.
“I’m here.” The bed on his side creaks.
“Every second.” A quiet laugh, ruined at the edges. “Tomorrow, I’ll be good again.”
“Tomorrow,” I say, and let the word hold both of us while the line hums warm between our ears.
“Look at your wrist,” he says, when I’m close. “Say my name once.”
“Cassius.” It comes out like a prayer.
“Again,” he whispers. “Good girl. Now—don’t be quiet for me.”
The world tips. I hear my own breath, his praise in my ear, and then it hits—bright and dissolving. I ride it with his voice holding me steady, the lamp flicker, my heartbeat everywhere.
Silence hums. I realize I’m smiling at the ceiling, sweaty and boneless.
He’s the first to speak, voice rough with something that sounds like awe. “Still with me?”
“Yes.” It’s a sigh.
“Good.” A softer hush. “I won’t ask for anything else tonight.”
“You already got everything.”
“Yes. I got to hear you,” he says. “That is everything.”
We breathe together for a few beats that feel like more than beats.
“Drink some water,” he adds, and somehow it’s the sweetest thing anyone’s ever ordered me to do.
“Call me tomorrow?” I ask, surprising myself with how much I want it.
“Of course.” A pause. “Good night, Lindy girl. Sweet dreams.”
“Good night, Cassius. Stay safe,” I say, unsure why.
I don’t know it, but somehow I know he’s in danger all the time.
He may be dangerous but that terrifies me less than the thought of something happening to him.
I listen to him breathe for a few more heartbeats and then hang up the phone.
I plug it back in, ensuring my alarm is set for work before I roll over and fall asleep too exhausted despite all the thoughts swirling around my brain about the supposed bad man who saved me today.
On the way to work the next morning, everything looks darker through my windows. I frown at the glass. Tint I don’t remember being this deep. It makes the city feel safer. It also makes my stomach swoop. I tell myself it’s a trick of the sun.
At my desk, the kitchen ghost is replaced by the office ones: a woman in a beehive and cat-eye liner tapping an invisible cigarette at the copier; a man in rolled-up sleeves and suspenders leaning by the water cooler.
Last night’s call with Cassius hasn’t shaken out of my system.
His is voice still threading through my ribs, so of course the dead are dialed up.
I’m lost in the world of the manuscript I'm editing, when Wyatt appears at my cubicle entrance. The air between us is charged with an awkward tension left over from yesterday. I pause, fingers hovering over the keyboard, and look up.
“Hey, Melinda,” Wyatt starts, his tone trying for casual but not quite hitting the mark. “I was thinking, maybe we could have lunch again today?”
I offer a smile, my mind racing for a polite decline.
“Thanks, Wyatt, but I actually brought my lunch today. Maybe some other time?” It's a half-truth. The reality is, after our lunch, I know I have to set boundaries. I don’t get the sense that he wants to be my friend and I know I don’t want to be anything more to him.
This can’t be like before. I refuse to give another man the excuse that he thought I was interested.
London taught me the cost of being “too nice.” I didn't cross the ocean to relearn the same lesson in a different time zone.
I came here to be brave, and part of that is setting boundaries and not feeling guilty when they make someone else unhappy.