25. Jasmine
twenty-five
Jasmine
Icounted the seconds, one at a time, until Adam came back.
At the ninety-sixth second, I heard the music.
It was classical, not the high-drama stuff they use in movies for car chases or war.
More like something they’d put on at a fancy steakhouse to remind you that your money had taste.
Violin, piano, a heartbeat underneath. It echoed through the concrete, layering on top of the blue light and the endless hum of the air duct.
He was letting me know this wasn’t another day in the program. This was a night for remembering.
He appeared at the end of the row, a dark figure silhouetted by the red glow of the emergency exit lamp.
He walked slow, both hands full. In the right: a bottle of wine, label blacked out with marker, as if that could hide the fact that it was probably a gas station special.
In the left: two glasses, one slightly chipped at the rim.
Tucked under his arm, a rose—real, not plastic, with the thorn still on.
He set the glasses on the little steel shelf outside the cell, then slid the bottle through the slot with a practiced, unhurried motion.
The rose he set down last, right at the edge where it would catch the light.
He stood, wiped his hands on the front of his shirt, and smiled.
Not the wolf smile this time. This was a teenager’s grin, the kind you give when you want to be seen as a little dangerous, but not dangerous enough to be sent home early.
“Red or white?” he asked.
I said nothing, just watched him, eyes level. My hands were folded loose at my stomach. I wanted him to see my pulse, steady as a metronome.
“Red it is,” he said, and poured both glasses. He used the chipped one for himself.
He lifted his, held it up, and waited for me to do the same.
I took the glass and studied the color—deep, nearly black at the center, with just a razor of ruby at the edge.
I remembered the last time I’d had wine.
It was the day before the club’s Christmas run, the house full of men yelling at football and Jasmine, standing in the kitchen with Sniper, the two of us pretending we didn’t hear the chaos from the living room.
“Cheers,” Adam said.
I touched the glass to the bars. He did the same.
He sipped, made a show of swirling, then smacked his lips. “You know, most women resist. At first. Then they get it—the inevitability.” He leaned close, one hand resting on the cold mesh. “You’re different, Jasmine. You skipped all the steps.”
I put the glass down and moved to the bars, standing so close our fingers almost touched through the slot. “You want me to say thank you?” I said. “For picking me out of the lineup?”
He shook his head, amused. “No. But I do want to watch you realize it’s over. That you lost.”
I laughed—real, not performative. “You’re the only man I know who could kill me and still be jealous of my husband.”
He blinked, not expecting it, then smoothed his face back to zero.
“I don’t want to kill you,” he said. “I want to own you.”
The music shifted—swelled, then ebbed, the piano trickling down like the world was running out of notes.
He said, “You promised me a show.”
I leaned into the bars, pressing my forehead to the cold. “Unlock the slot,” I said. “Or do you only trust me when I’m tied down?”
He hesitated, a flicker of something at the corner of his mouth. But then he unlocked the cell. Foolish man.
He stepped back, arms at his sides, the glass of wine still in one hand.
I moved to the door, knelt, and raised my hands. Palms up, wrists crossed in a gesture I’d seen a hundred times in the club—trust, surrender, the moment before a fight or a fuck. He stared at my hands, then at my face.
“You’re not going to hurt me,” he said. It was almost a question.
“I could,” I said, voice low. “But then we’d both lose.”
He stepped in, the wine sloshing in the glass, and set it down by my knee. He reached for the cuffs, grabbed my wrists, and just held them, as if testing the pressure. His skin was dry, nails short and clean. I flexed, let him feel my tendons, the muscle underneath.
“You’re not afraid,” he said. “You should be.”
I shrugged. “I’ve lived with men like you my whole life. You’re just a better-dressed version.”
He smiled, but the eyes never moved. He leaned down, slow, brought his face to the level of the slot. I watched his pupils dilate, the black eating the brown, until they looked like the desert at midnight.
“Make it good,” he said. “I want it to last.”
I laughed again, a sharper edge this time, and then I took him into my mouth. I sucked him slow, my tongue swirling around the head of his cock.
He tasted of nothing, or maybe everything—the bitter salt of him, the faint sting of whatever he’d used to wash, and underneath it, that copper warmth that all men carry when they’re trying not to show how badly they want you.
I kept my eyes up, tracking his face, the way his jaw went slack and his eyes rolled toward the ceiling.
His hands found the bars above my head, fingers curling through the mesh like he was hanging from a ledge. I let him think he was.
I worked him with my mouth, slow at first, then faster when I felt his hips shift, the involuntary forward press of a man who’d forgotten he was supposed to stay in control.
I used my tongue the way Sniper had taught me—not because I was thinking of Sniper right then, but because muscle memory is a bitch and it doesn’t ask permission.
Flat against the shaft, then the underside, then a tight circle at the crown that made his knees buckle the tiniest fraction.
His breath came out in a hiss, then a groan, and I felt the first pulse of him, the way his whole body tightened like a wire being wound too far.
He said my name—Eve Eight, the number first, the designation, like I was a product he’d memorized—and then, softer, almost a whisper, “Jasmine.” The way he said it made me want to vomit, but I kept going, because the job wasn’t done yet.
He told me I was extraordinary. He told me he knew I’d come around.
His voice cracked on the last word, and I felt him swell against my tongue, the moment approaching, the moment when every man on earth stops being careful and starts being stupid.
I didn’t wait. I didn’t hesitate. I bit down with everything I had—jaw locked, teeth crushing, the taste of him flooding my mouth in a hot, iron rush.
The sound he made wasn’t a scream at first. It was the sound of a man who’d just realized the floor wasn’t where he thought it was.
Then the scream came, and it filled the bunker like water fills a sink, bouncing off every wall, every cell, every terrified ear in the row.
Adam staggered back from the bars, blood and fluid spraying the concrete between us, both hands flying to his groin.
He hit the far wall and slid down it, knees buckling, hands clamped between his legs, and the noises that came out of him weren’t human.
Not anymore. They were animal sounds, guttural and wet, the kind of sounds that make you grateful you can’t see what’s happening on the other side of the wall.
I was on my feet. I was at the bars. My hands wrapped around the steel, knuckles white, breath coming fast but steady.
I watched him. I watched every second of it, the way his face drained of color, the way his mouth opened and closed like a fish on a dock, the way his eyes went wide and glassy with a shock so complete it looked like he’d been unplugged from himself.
He doubled over, nearly puking, then stumbled down the corridor, one hand pressed to the wall for balance. At the end of the row, the door crashed open, and Emma stormed in. She wore pajamas and nothing else, hair wild and eyes blazing.
She took one look at Adam, at the blood on his hand, at the splatter on the floor, and then at me, at the open cell door, teeth red. She pointed a gun at me, and I closed the cell door. Escape would have to come at another time.
She grabbed his shoulder, yanked him upright, and hissed, “That was a mistake.”
I smiled, every tooth showing.
Emma shot me a look, pure hate and admiration, then half-dragged, half-carried Adam away.
The music drifted on, quieter now, back to the strings and the piano. The other women in the row cheered—some laughed, some just stared. I wiped my mouth, stood, and picked up the glass of wine. I finished it in a single gulp, the tannin burning all the way down.
On the floor, the rose lay sideways, petals bruised. Adam’s bloody dick lay right next to it.
I stepped on it, twisted, and let the thorns prick my heel.
I pressed my forehead to the bars, watched the end of the corridor, and waited for whatever would come next.
I had won something; I just didn’t know what it was yet.
But the whole place reeked of victory.