I saved the number I had airdropped from her phone to mine and sent her a text message.
HEATH: Your ass looks good when you run.
I walked to my bike, the seat still slightly warm from her touch, and started the engine. The sound shattered the silence as I pocketed my phone only to feel it vibrate as she responded to my poke about her form.
CORA: That’s sexual assault, Chimera. A policy you should be intimately familiar with by now.
I barked a hollow laugh. Hell, the whole night had been a sexual assault case in the making, and this was the first time she trotted that card out? Gutsy, but I was prepared for it. If my job was lost to that, then sure, I'd wear it. Not happily, but sure.
HEATH: I’ll make sure you get home safe no matter what, butterfly. You can fire me in the morning, if you like.
CORA: And if I told you to go to hell right now and not come anywhere near my home?
HEATH: Is that what you’re saying, butterfly?
CORA: …
CORA: …
CORA: Thank you for the coffee. It was my favorite. The bagel too.
HEATH: You’re welcome.
I pocketed my phone and pulled away from the office, heading to where she lived in a downtown apartment, alone. Half a block back from hers I reversed into an alley, keeping to the shadowed side. Making sure it was unoccupied, I turned off my bike a few moments before she rounded the block’s corner.
Hell, Cora must have sprinted that last few hundred meters to make it home that fast. Either I’d rattled her that much, or…
I’d rattled her in another way altogether.
I tossed my phone in my hand as she stopped out the front of her building, and turned in a circle, checking the streetscape. Her gaze lingered on the shadows where I stood, but she didn’t seem to see me, lingering for only a second before moving along.
I opened her messages and sent another.
HEATH: Run, Cora. I’m watching.
CORA: Why do you want to see me run?
HEATH: It’s my favorite game.
HEATH: One day I might even chase you.
Cora looked up from her phone, staring straight at me, I swore.
I pressed call as she backed up into the apartment building with its lit stairwell that wound up and up, all the way to the top floor. She picked up, her breathing ragged, but didn’t say anything. She knew it was me. For a minute, neither of us spoke.
Then I laughed, and she ran.
Winding her way up the stairwell, clutching her phone like a lifeline in full visual range of me as I laughed softly as she ran and ran and ran.
I watched until she exited the stairwell, the breaths coming fast, so ragged. Her keys trembled, rattling metal on metal asshe fumbled the lock and swore. Her door opened and slammed. Her shattering breaths broke on a sob as she crashed against something heavy.
I imagined her pressed to the door or the wall inside her apartment, clutching her phone and her keys, an utter, sweating, dripping, panting mess.
My cock hardened as I gripped myself tight, willing myself not to cum as I held my ground. “Are you alright, Cora?” I asked softly.
She let out another sob, though her breaths were gentler now, less ragged. Breathier. “Yes, Valentine. I’m okay.”
“You’re inside? All locked up?”
