Chapter 2: Caught in Plain Sight
The moment he stood, the spell broke and panic surged through her, cold and bright. April turned, the smooth soles of her shoes slipping slightly on the marble. She didn't look back. She wove through the crowd, a blur of perfume counters and shimmering storefronts, her heartbeat a frantic drum in her ears. She could feel him. Not hearing footsteps, just feeling the displacement of air, the tracking focus of his attention like a laser on the back of her neck.
She spotted a sign for restrooms, an arrow pointing down a narrower corridor. An escape. She ducked into the hallway, the bustling noise of the mall becoming muffled, then distant. The air changed. It was cooler, smelling of industrial cleaner and stale floral air freshener. Flickering fluorescent lights cast a sickly glow on scuffed linoleum. A cracked mirror reflected her flight—wide eyes, flushed face, blonde hair a mess. She looked exactly like what she was: a rabbit that had just bolted.
She slowed, pressing a hand to her chest, trying to catch her breath. Why did she run here? It was empty, silent except for the low hum of a faulty light. A dead end.
The whisper of a shoe on linoleum sounded behind her.
She spun.
Ahmann stood at the mouth of the corridor, blocking the way back to the world. He wasn’t breathing hard. He looked utterly calm, a dark silhouette against the brighter light of the mall behind him. Then he stepped forward, into the corridor’s grim light, and the door to the main concourse swung shut with a soft, final click.
The hum of the mall faded to a ghost.
He walked toward her, not quickly, but with an inevitable certainty. Her back met the cool, painted cinderblock wall. Nowhere else to go.
“You run,” he said, his voice a low, smooth baritone that vibrated in the enclosed space. It wasn’t a question. He stopped a foot away, not touching her, his body radiating heat. “But your eyes didn’t run. They invited.”
“I didn’t—” she started, her voice a thin squeak. She cleared her throat. “It was a dare.”
“I don’t care.” His gaze traveled down her body, slow, appreciative. “The dare is for him. This is for you.”
He moved then, fast enough to make her flinch. His hand didn’t grab, it slid. It settled around the curve of her waist, his palm searing through the sheer top. He leaned in, his lips beside her ear. His breath was hot, smelling of coffee and something darker, mint and spice. His erection pressed against her hip, a solid, insistent ridge of heat through his trousers.
“I saw it,” he whispered, the words vibrating against her skin. “From across the room. I saw how wet you were for me in front of everyone. The way you touched yourself. A little taste.”
A choked sound escaped her. Denial was a pointless reflex. He had seen. He knew. The shame of it was molten, mixing with the pooling heat between her legs, confusing her utterly.
“Were you showing off for him?” Ahmann murmured, his nose tracing the line of her jaw. “Or were you finally showing off for yourself?”
She couldn’t answer. Her mind was static. Her body was screaming.
His other hand came up, not to her breast, but to her throat. His thumb tilted her chin up, forcing her to meet his eyes. The hunger there was no longer veiled. It was total. “Tell me to leave,” he said, his voice dropping even lower, a rough challenge. “Say the word and I walk back out that door. You go find your boyfriend with his little dares.”
Her lips parted. The word ‘stop’ formed on her tongue. It died there. This was the boundary. The one Derek’s silly games only hinted at. This man, this stranger in a grimy mall corridor, was the real thing. Dangerous. Unscripted. Her heart felt like it would bruise her ribs from the inside. The ache between her legs was a persistent, throbbing yes.
She shook her head, just a tiny, frantic movement.
A faint, ruthless smile touched his mouth. “That’s what I thought.”
His mouth crashed down on hers. It wasn’t a kiss of exploration. It was possession. A claiming. His tongue pushed past her lips, and the taste of him—dark, adult, addictive—flooded her senses. She whimpered, her hands flying up, not to push him away, but to clutch at the crisp cotton of his shirt. The wall was cold and hard against her back, a stark contrast to the furnace of his body pinning her there.
One of his hands slid from her waist, down over her hip. His fingers skimmed the hem of her short skirt, then dipped beneath it. His touch on her bare thigh was electric. She jerked, breaking the kiss with a gasp.
“Shhh,” he breathed against her swollen lips. His fingers trailed higher, along the sensitive skin of her inner thigh, toward the damp lace of her underwear. “Let’s see if I was right.”
Her whole body tensed, strung tight as a wire. The fluorescent light buzzed overhead. Somewhere, a faucet dripped. His dark eyes held hers, watching every flicker of fear, of excitement, of surrender. His fingertips brushed the soaked fabric.
A harsh, jarring buzz shattered the silence.
It was his phone, vibrating in his pocket, a stark, modern intrusion in the primal space they’d carved out. He froze. His eyes closed for a second, a muscle ticking in his jaw. The spell didn’t break, but it cracked.
He withdrew his hand slowly, deliberately, leaving her burning and empty. He pulled the phone out, glanced at the screen, and silenced it with a thumb. When he looked back at her, the intensity was still there, but it was banked, controlled again.
“Timing,” he said, the word clipped. He smoothed a strand of her hair back from her damp forehead, a gesture that was almost tender and utterly at odds with everything else. “This isn’t a hallway.”
He took a half-step back, giving her just enough space to feel the cold air rush between them. Her legs trembled. She could still feel the imprint of his mouth, his hands.
He reached into an inner pocket, not for his phone, but for a simple black pen. He took her wrist, his grip firm but not painful. Without asking, he turned her palm up and wrote a series of digits on her skin in clean, precise strokes. The ink was cool, a shocking contrast to the heat coursing through her.
“That’s for when you’re done playing games,” he said, releasing her. He looked her up and down one last time, his gaze missing nothing—her kiss-swollen mouth, her disheveled hair, the shaky rise and fall of her chest. “The choice is yours now. Really yours.”
He turned and walked back down the corridor, his footsteps echoing. He pushed the door open, and the noise of the living mall flooded in—a wave of mundane reality. He didn’t look back. He was gone.
April slid down the wall until she was sitting on the cold floor, her skirt hiking up. She stared at the numbers on her palm. They seemed to pulse. From the main concourse, she heard a muffled shout—Derek’s voice, annoyed, calling her name.
She closed her fist, smearing the ink.