Descent (Black Heart Romance)

We drink champagne and drive through the city.

I’m exhilarated and a little drunk.

Calvin grabs me and pulls me onto his lap as we near my apartment.

I can feel the hard bulge of his cock under my ass, but I look away and try to pretend I don’t.

He grabs my jaw and wrenches it back, forcing me to look at him.

My stomach pitches from the dark, hungry look in his eyes even after he’s already had me.

We’re almost to my apartment. It’s almost the end.

He tells Hollis to drive around the block.

And then it’s a haze of bunched up fabric and bare limbs. Me on my back in the limo, Calvin between my thighs. My nails digging into the soft, buttery leather as he drives his massive cock into me again and again. His fingers leaving bruises as he holds onto me tight so he can pound even harder.

I’m full of him. So full.

And then ecstasy. Flying high as the orgasm rocked me, as he drove deep and emptied himself inside me for the second time that night.

We pull up in front of my apartment. I’m righting my clothes and hair just in case anybody sees me on the way to my floor.

The end hangs heavy in the air, the last two words that need to be typed on our story. I can feel fingers poised over the keys as I reach for the door handle.

Not Calvin. He still thinks I’ll reconsider. He asks me to one more time.

I shake my head no and climb out of the car.

Once I’m safely out of his reach on the sidewalk, I look in and tell him goodbye.

Goodbye.

I’m alone in my bedroom when I wake up from the dream.

Only it’s not a dream at all. It’s a memory.

A memory of things that actually happened after we left the museum last night, after we got away with something we definitely should not have done.

A night that never should have happened.

At least it’s over now.

It’s all over now. I’ve honored my promise and fulfilled my end of the bargain. Today I’ll make calls about getting my locks changed again so he won’t have a key.

It was a wild ride, but it’s over now and time to get back to my life.

I sit up in bed with my covers still wrapped around me. I run my hands over my face and try to summon some energy to get out of the bed and start my day.

That’s when I hear it—a noise.

I freeze and listen for it again.

It sounded like it came from inside my apartment, but no one else should be in my apartment.

I look around for Marie, but she must have already woken up and slunk out of the room. The door is cracked open enough for her to get out.

Maybe she’s getting into something in the kitchen. I better go check.

Carefully moving back the blankets, I slide my legs over the edge of the bed, but before my feet touch the ground, I hear another sound—it sounds like something opening and closing. A door?

Marie can’t open doors.

I tell myself it could be a neighbor. I hear neighbors getting home all the time.

The walls in this apartment building are thin, but that didn’t sound like it was coming from a neighbor’s apartment. It really sounded like it came from mine.

Is Calvin in my apartment?

I know he has a key, but I don’t want to go out there thinking it’s him and find out that—by some coincidence—I’m being robbed.

I look around my cramped room for something that could be used as a weapon, but there isn’t much. My writing table and chair, my dresser, Marie’s little lounging bed in the corner. Nothing hard, nothing that could hurt.

My gaze stops on the oscillating fan shoved in the corner. This apartment doesn’t have central air and I roast in the summer. The only thing that keeps me from dying of heat exhaustion is probably that fan.

Which happens to have a long metal bar I could use like a bat.

Decision made, I push off the bed and cross the room to dismantle my fan. I pop the bar out of the base and take off the motor and the blades. Once it’s just a metal bar, I practice holding it menacingly like a baseball bat, then ease my bedroom door open and creep out into the hall.

I hear more noise now including something that sounds like… a sizzle?

What is that amazing smell?

Confused, I round the corner to my kitchen, but just in case it is someone dangerous, I prepare to swing the bat.

Chef Ryan is standing at my stove, cooking. He turns around, appears startled when he sees me wielding my makeshift weapon, then says cautiously, “Good morning.”

I sag, dropping my makeshift bat to my side and releasing a sigh of relief.