Caught between two Kings

Joanna POV

I tell myself I am doing this for a story. For a moment of inspiration I can pin to the page later, something I can turn into a collection, something I can sell. That is my excuse, the version of events I repeat to myself like a prayer when the truth feels too cheap.

The car smells like leather and something sharp, like cologne and power. He drives without talking. I sit there counting streetlights, thinking of stupid things, like whether the leaves on the trees look the same in his neighborhood, whether his doorman has a name. Normal details, the kind you use to pretend you are safe.

“You quiet,” he says finally, low, like he is pointing out a fact. Not an accusation. A fact.

“Lots going through my head,” I say. “Like how to afford rent next month.”

He lets a small laugh out, without humor. “Not the answer I expected.”

He drove into the parking garage.

His place looks like an ad for minimalism. Glass everywhere, black couch that could double for a stage prop, a kitchen so clean it feels staged. No photos on the wall, no mugs, nothing that says someone has lived here and left crumbs and small burns on the stove like real people do. It is beautiful and unreadable. I think of my mother and a framed photo behind her head where she keeps a scuffed mug because she likes to think life is messy.

“You look different close up,” he says, watching me from across the room. He says it like he is surprised I am not the picture he had in his head.

“And you look like you swallowed a city,” I say, trying to push the world back into something ridiculous. It lands a few inches from a laugh. He does not smile, he narrows his eyes, and for a second I think he will be kind, and then he steps closer and that small hope dies.

“Say it,” he tells me.

“What?” I ask, heart skipping because he sounds like he is about to test me, like I am the wrong answer on an exam he should have studied for.

“That you want this.” He does not ask in a flirt, he states it like a thing that needs to be checked off.

I feel stupid for the way my throat tightens. I feel stupid for the way my hands go cold. I want to say no and walk to the elevator and go home and live with the shame of the missed chance. I want to say a hundred things. Instead the thing that comes out is small and soft and honest.

“Maybe,” I say. “Maybe I want something I will regret.”

He steps in, mouth finding mine like he has been rehearsing this moment and forgot to put in tenderness. It is not pretty. It is not tender. It is clumsy, urgent, full of teeth and breath and the small strangled sounds you do not share with strangers.

He pushed back to the glass window. His hands holding my hips.

We fell into one another like we planned this. No perfect choreography, no neat lines. My dress gets stuck on a zipper, I swear and laugh at the same time, and he curses under his breath, impatient, like he wants everything to be quick so feelings do not find a foothold. I hate him for that. I hate him for that loud need I feel in my bones.

He is rougher than I expected, not mean but not careful, which somehow cuts deeper. I have been kissed before, but this is a collision. I taste something bitter and nothing sweet. His hands map me like he is learning a country and I am a border he intends to cross.

At one point I pull back because my chest hurts. My breath is loud, and I look at him, and there is a rawness there I did not see at the gala. Not softness. Not warmth. A patient, empty curiosity. He watches me like a boy with his first dangerous toy.

“You do this often?” I ask, stupid and small.

He shrugs, a tiny movement that says everything and nothing. “Sometimes.”

“And you are careful?” My hands tremble, and I hate how shaky my voice sounds.

“Careful is boring,” he says. It is a throwaway line but the way he delivers it means something else. It means he does not value the things that should be kept safe.

We move again because bodies are traitors. There is sweat, and breath, and the realness of skin against skin. It is loud in a way that makes me ashamed, and I do not think about anything but the raw, hot now, which is exactly the point. He is all edges and no apology, and I am both terrified and relieved to be allowed to be wanted, even if it is a shallow sort of wanting.

After, there is a heavy quiet. The city comes back like someone adjusting a dimmer. He dresses without ceremony. He does not ask for my number. He does not say stay. He does not say anything that pretends this was more than it was.

“Now leave,” he says, and it is more a direction than a request.

I grab my things with hands that are clumsy. I can barely bend my fingers right. My dress is twisted, my hair plastered to my neck. I think about saying something brilliant, about calling him out for how hollow it felt, about demanding an explanation. Instead I say something small and useless.

“You will forget me tomorrow,” I say, because that is a thing people say when they want to sound brave.

He looks at me like he has been waiting for that to be said. “Maybe,” he says. “Or maybe I will remember you because you are an interesting mistake.”

“Interesting mistake,” I repeat, and the words fall flat in the elevator.

Outside, the air is colder than the apartment. I pull my coat tighter even though it is too thin. The street is still buzzing with other people who did not sleep, who apartment share and ride the train and rehearse meetings and do not have men like Jordan Kings inviting them up to their buildings. The normal people keep moving, unaware of the small private wars some of us start in the dark.

I walk home like the city is different now, like it moved under me in a way that shifted something I cannot undo. I aim for the cafe that is open all night, because walking helps. The neon makes my eyes water. I think of how my sketches will be different, darker maybe, or softer if I dared to tell the truth, and I am angry at myself for thinking of work already.

Halfway through the hallway, I stand there for a long minute, letting the city spin, waiting for the feeling to fade. It does not. It lingers like a secret planted too close to the surface.

When I get home I throw my dress on the chair. I do not shower. I do not wash the lipstick off my hand. Instead I sit on the edge of the bed and my phone lights up with a missed call I do not recognize. A number. No name. No message. My thumb hovers over it like it is a trap.

I do not call back. I can hear his voice behind my eyes though, calm and close, saying something that sounded a lot like a promise or a warning. I do not know which it was.

At two in the morning my phone buzzes. A text. From an unknown number.

You will come alone tomorrow, it says, and the line is his handwriting translated into pixels.

I stare at it like a dare. My chest squeezes. I do not know whether to be terrified or flattered. I do not know whether I am safe. I do know that when I close my eyes, I see his hand at my hip, like a brand.

I sleep poorly, if at all, the way people sleep when a storm is coming and the roof feels thin. The message sits in my phone, unreadable and loud.

Tomorrow will tell whether I was just a one night or something else. Tomorrow will show whether his words are the beginning of a chess game, or a countdown.

Either way I am not sure I want to know. But I will go.