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“Those parties, Saber, are very dangerous. Promise me you won’t go back.”
“What do you know about them?”
“Nothing, but don’t go back. You were in danger tonight.”
“In danger ofwhat?”
She lay her head back on the couch, closed her eyes for a moment, and felt like she was spinning, or like the entirety of the universe was spinning around her, and she was the focal point.
“I’m the center of the universe,” she murmured, and laughed.
“Let me put you to bed,” he said and went over to her, scooping her up.
He was sostrong. She could feel the muscles of his arm under his crisp cotton shirt. She ran her hand over them, squeezed them, and giggled.
She rolled her head into the crook of his neck as he helped pick her up, and she smelled him. Black pepper and leather and something sweet, like oranges.
“Your man perfume smells good.”
“My man perfume?”
“I love it so much. I love everything about you.”
“You barely know me,” he reminded her again, and made her stand up. He helped her walk but wasn’t about to sweep her into his arms and carry her like a princess, like she imagined he might.
“No, I don’t know you,” she said. “I’m sure I’d get to know you and find out you were really boring and self-absorbed. Rich men are actually a cancer on society. My friend Lozen said that. You don’t seem like a cancer on society, though.”
“Ok.”
They hobbled, Saber leaning and giggling against Ansel, smelling his lovely scent and running her hands over his arms. He tugged her up the stairs to a bedroom, large, sparse, andcomfortable with a king bed covered in white sheets and a cloudy white comforter. It looked so inviting.There was a painting hanging over it. A Rothko?
“Thank you,” Saber said, nuzzling against Ansel’s neck.
He shuddered and leaned in, letting his lips touch her.
“Come to bed with me,” she said, her breath sticky in her throat. “I won’t ever say anything to anyone, and we never have to speak of it again. I want my first time to be—”
“No, Saber, please. You really,reallydon’t know what you’re doing. And you’reextremelyintoxicated.”
“I’m not that naive,” she said. “I’m not some—”
He reached up then and laid his hand gently across her throat. She instinctively went silent and felt her heart thump with fear.
The hand was so cool it made her shudder. He looked her in the eyes, and she felt a wonderful, intense pleasure building up deep inside of her. Her mouth parted and she felt herself pant. The hot feeling filled her, and she pressed herself against him, leaning into that cool, firm, hand as the intensity of the moment seemed to increase with every one of her shallow breaths, traveling through her body the way a fire moves around a room. She felt a need so intense, like a sharp ache in her belly, in her mouth, in her beating heart.
Something changed, something in her perception, something deep in the hidden part of her mind, and she realized that the need wasn’t coming from her, it was coming from Ansel.
She was suddenly very sober, and deeply terrified. The needing, and the knowing, it was unnatural, surreal. The way he wanted her was not like how she wanted him, not at all, and if he got what he wanted, it would hurt her, maybe worse.
She wasn’t just feeling it, he wastellingher.
I want you, but I would hurt you.
Terror pulsed through her, and she stumbled back into the room, onto the bed.The world spun again, but this time it was disorienting and unpleasant. She worried she might get sick.
He stood in the doorway looking like a cold, unrecognizable stranger, his bright, glowing eyes trained on her, flickering.
“Goodnight, Saber.”
