2. Dove
DOVE
There is a man on my bed.
My brain keeps handing me this sentence and sliding off it.
There is a man on my bed. He’s huge—the biggest man I’ve ever seen in a small space—and he’s sitting like he’s been there a while, like he sat down and got comfortable and decided to wait.
Both hands on his thighs. Relaxed. The way someone sits who is used to waiting in rooms where bad things are about to happen.
The deadbolt is behind him. Chained from the inside.
My phone is not on the counter.
“Ezra,” he said. And I don’t know any Ezra.
I don’t know any man who looks like this—six-three at least, shoulders that take up half my bedroom doorframe, hands that look like they’ve done things I don’t want to know about, a face I might’ve called handsome in another context, in another apartment, with my phone in my own hand.
“Give me my phone,” I say.
“No.”
Just that. No explanation. No apology. Like I asked if it was raining and he checked and it wasn’t.
My eyes go to the door again. The deadbolt is turned. The chain is up. I locked the deadbolt when I got home—I always do—and I didn’t put up the chain. He put up the chain.
He was already in here when I got home.
He waited for me to shower.
“Who are you?” I say.
“The man who’s been watching you.” He tilts his head toward the window. Toward the alley. Toward the building across from mine. “Through that window. For six weeks.”
Six weeks.
Six weeks of me at my kitchen counter in just the sleep shirt. Six weeks of me at that window without a bra because why would I need one, nobody can see through an alley from a dark building?—
“You’ve been watching me from across the alley.”
“Yes.”
“With what.”
“Rifle scope.”
My legs don’t feel reliable.
“I’ve been letting myself into this apartment while you were at work,” he says. Like he’s finishing a list. Like he’s been rehearsing it. “More times than you want to know.”
“Leave,” I say. “Get out. Right now.”
“No.”
I move for the door.
He stands.
The room changes when he stands. He fills the space between the bed and the wall and there’s no way around him—not left, not right, no gap. I knew he was big. I didn’t understand it until he was vertical.
I stop.
“The window,” I say. Three stories up. Fire escape on the north face. I’m doing the math and it’s bad.
“The fire escape’s on the north side,” he says. “You won’t make it.”
He just told me he knows my building’s fire escape layout.
Two strides and he’s between me and the bathroom door. Not grabbing me. Just there. Between me and the only other door. Arms at his sides.
“What do you want?” I say.
He’s looking at me the way I’ve caught men looking at things they’ve wanted for a long time. Not a leer. Something worse. Something that’s had months to turn from want into certainty.
“Tell me what you want,” I say again.
“You.” Simple. Certain. “I’ve been watching you for six weeks. I know your schedule, your sounds, your body through that scope, and I’m done watching.”
My towel is the only thing between me and being naked in front of this man and my body is doing something I have not authorized it to do.
I am wet. Standing in my invaded apartment, terrified, and I am wet and my thighs are pressing together and I cannot make them stop.
“Move,” I say. “Let me past.”
He steps aside from the bathroom door.
I go in. I close it. I look at the lock—the little push-button lock, flimsy, never replaced it, always meant to. I push it. Then I stand with my back against the door and my towel in my hands and my heart going too fast and my pussy clenching around nothing.
Something is wrong with me.
I open the door.
He’s in the hallway. Waiting. Not surprised.
“You let me,” I say.
“You weren’t going to stay in there.”
“How do you know that?”
“I know you.” He’s looking at me with that look again. Patient. Certain. “I know how long you can stand being closed in somewhere alone. Seven minutes, usually. The time you lost your keys last winter—I watched you sit in your car for six minutes before you tried the super.”
He watched me. He was there for that.
My hand tightens on the towel.
“Six weeks,” I say. “You’ve been watching me for six weeks.”
“I’ve been inside this apartment so many times I know the creak pattern of every floorboard. I know which drawer you keep your vibrator in.” He takes one step toward me. “I know you take the left side of the bed. I know your shampoo changed two weeks ago. I know the face you make when you come.”
The flush that hits my face goes all the way down.
“You—“
“Through the scope.” He’s close now. Close enough that his voice drops. “Your bedroom light on late. The shadows moving. I know what you were doing and I know the rhythm and I know it takes you longer when you’re tired.”
“Stop—“
“Your pussy is wet right now.” He says it flat. Like a fact. “It’s all over you—the way you’re breathing, the way your thighs keep pressing together. You’re terrified and you’re wet and you hate yourself for the second one.”
“That’s not?—“
“Tell me to stop and mean it, Dove.”
He stands there. Hands at his sides. Giving me the door, the window, the push-button bathroom lock. He’s giving me options and we both know I’m not taking any of them. His hands hang loose and easy, the hands of someone who has done terrible things and is completely comfortable with them.
My mouth says stop.
My thighs press tighter.
I can’t mean it.
He reaches up and touches my face—just his hand on my jaw, one hand covering half my face, his thumb below my ear—and the warmth of it makes my knees soft.
His hand is enormous. He spans my face with one hand and his thumb doesn’t shake and he’s been in my apartment more times than I can process and he knows exactly where I keep my vibrator and I am not running.
He kisses me.
Not hard. Deliberate. His mouth on mine like he’s been practicing the angle. I bite his lower lip—actual bite, hard, teeth into flesh—and he makes a sound against my mouth and his hand tightens on my jaw and he kisses me through it.
“Don’t—“ I say against his mouth.
“Your cunt says something different.”
His other hand goes to the fold of the towel. I grab for it. Both my hands on the towel. That leaves nothing to push him with and we both know that’s why he did it.
The towel drops.
I’m naked and wet from the shower and his eyes go over me like he’s confirming something he already knew.
“Even better than watching,” he says.
He steers me toward the bed—his hand at my waist, not dragging, just present—and I’m walking because my legs are walking and I haven’t told them to stop.
He puts me at the edge. Stands behind me.
And then he undresses, unhurried, and I don’t turn around but I hear the sound of his belt, the fabric, and when his hand comes to the back of my neck I feel his cock against my ass—thick, heavy, hard enough to make my stomach drop.
He’s going to be too much.
I know it and my pussy clenches around nothing and my mouth is dry.
“Don’t,” I say.
His hand wraps around my hair. Pulls. Not hard—firm. My head tips back and he’s behind me and the room narrows to the heat of him along my spine and his fist in my hair and the blunt head of him pressing between my thighs from behind.
Just there. Resting.
“You’re soaking,” he says against the back of my neck. “I can feel it. Your pussy is dripping on my cock and you’re still saying don’t.”
“I don’t—“ My hips push back. They push back on their own. Toward him.
He reads it.
His hand tightens in my hair. He pushes in from behind.
The sound I make is not a word.
He’s big. He’s thick and he goes slow and from this angle I feel every inch of it—deeper than I knew was possible, the full length of him filling me while his fist keeps my hair pulled taut and my face is in the sheets and my hands are gripping the mattress.
My body is full of a man I’ve known for fifteen minutes and he’s so deep it’s in my chest.
“There,” he says.
“Stop—“ But my pussy clenches around his cock so hard he groans. Clenches and grips and I hate it and I can’t stop it. My body knows what it wants and it doesn’t care that my brain hasn’t agreed.
“Your cunt is gripping me,” he says. He pulls my hair harder and I arch for him—arch, like a reflex, spine curving, pushing back onto his cock. “Every time I hold still you squeeze me tighter. That’s not a no.”
“Get off?—“
He pulls back. Drives in. The angle sends his cock so deep my vision goes white. The sound of skin hitting skin. My face pressed into the sheets and his hand in my hair and his hips against my ass and he fills me completely.
“Six weeks through that scope,” he says.
Moving now, steady, and the pleasure builds from somewhere so deep I can’t locate it.
“I’ve watched you in that kitchen. I’ve been in this bed without you here.
I’ve had your underwear in my pocket for weeks and touched myself thinking about exactly this.
” He pulls my hair and thrusts deep. “Exactly what it would feel like to bend you over and push into you from behind.”
“Don’t—“ I’m saying it into the mattress. I’m saying don’t while pushing back onto his cock with every stroke, my pussy clenching around him like I’m trying to pull him deeper.
His free hand reaches under me. Finds my clit.
“I watched you do this to yourself,” he says against the back of my neck.
His fingers move and I gasp. “Through the scope.
You always use the left hand. You press here—“ Pressure, exactly right, and my legs shake.
“—and you tilt your hips like that—“ I’ve tilted my hips without meaning to and he knows, he sees it, his fingers keep the pressure exactly right.
“I watched you through a rifle scope and I know exactly what makes you come.”
“Stop—“
“Your pussy’s doing something very different than stop.”
His fingers on my clit and his cock driving in from behind and his fist in my hair and the combination is—I press my face into the sheets. Grip the fabric. Don’t move, if I don’t move, if I hold still?—
My hips push back anyway.
“Your shampoo changed two weeks ago,” he says behind me.
Low. Even. Like he’s just telling me things, like this is a normal conversation and he does not have his cock buried inside me from behind and his hand in my hair.
“I noticed through the scope. The smell of you in this apartment when I let myself in—still catching up to what the scope told me.”
His fingers press harder and my jaw drops open against the sheets.
“You check your phone at 3 AM.” He moves and I can’t—I can’t stop my thighs from shaking. “Every night. You unlock it and don’t read anything and put it back down. I’ve watched you do it from across the alley and from two feet away in this bed.”
He pulls my hair and thrusts deep and I’m shaking and I cannot stop.
“You sleep on the left side.” His voice doesn’t change. Same low pitch. “You’ve been alone long enough that you’ve stopped setting two plates.”
That one.
Something cracks open in my chest—the shame and the want and all of it together—and the sound I make is not a moan. It’s rawer than that. It’s the sound of someone being seen in exactly the place they didn’t know they were hiding.
I can’t hold still. My whole body is there. Right there. My legs are shaking and I’m saying stop and I’m saying don’t and his cock is deep inside me and his fingers are on my clit and his hand is in my hair and I?—
He pulls my hair hard enough to lift my head off the sheets. Puts his other hand over my mouth from behind.
The orgasm hits.
I scream into his palm. Hard. My whole body seizes around him—my pussy gripping his cock through every wave, my hands fisted in the sheets, my scream muffled under his hand while his fist stays tight in my hair.
I bite him. Hard. My teeth into his palm and I taste salt and he doesn’t flinch.
His cock doesn’t stop. He fucks me through every pulse of it from behind, driving deep with every wave, and keeps going.
“Good girl,” he says. Low. Against the back of my neck. “Knew you’d feel like this.”
“I hate you—“ I say into his hand.
“You’ll change your mind.” He keeps moving and the orgasm hasn’t stopped, it’s still rolling through me in waves. “Say that again when I’m not buried this deep inside you.”
He follows me over.
His hips jerk and go still. He comes deep—I feel every pulse of it, hot and heavy inside me, filling me from behind.
He doesn’t pull out. He holds where he is, chest pressed against my back, breath dragging ragged against my neck.
His hand loosens in my hair. His cum in me. The heat of it spreading and spreading.
He doesn’t move for a long time.
His hand drops from my mouth. His weight settles over my back. His cock stays inside me.
I’m still shaking.
“You should call someone,” he says. Eventually. Into my hair.
“You have my phone.”
He reaches into his pocket. Sets it on the nightstand. Far edge. Not within reach.
“There’s a building phone in the kitchen,” he says. “Handset. It works.”
I look at the ceiling. He’s still inside me. So is everything he left. My body has stopped shaking and started doing something quieter, something I don’t want to examine—settling. Like something that was braced has gone soft.
“Sleep,” he says.
“You’re staying.”
“Yes.”
“You broke into my apartment.”
“More times than you’d be comfortable hearing.”
“And you’re staying.”
“Yes.” His hand at my hip. Heavy and warm. “Sleep, Dove.”
I should reach for the building phone. I should call someone.
I should do a dozen things that a reasonable woman would do and I lie still in the dark with his cum inside me and his hand on my hip and the ache from where he pulled my hair still warm on my scalp and I can’t name what I’m feeling but it isn’t only fear.
I fall asleep before I can figure out what else it is.