Chapter 5: The First Night
The elevator doors sighed shut, sealing them in a capsule of polished steel and subdued light. Anzelm slid the key into the penthouse lock, the click echoing in the quiet hallway. He pushed the door open but paused on the threshold, a strange hesitation holding him back. The city sprawled below them, a river of light bleeding into the dark.
“You know,” he said, his voice lower than usual, “I didn’t actually think you’d say yes. Not this fast.”
Anna brushed past him, her shoulder deliberately grazing his arm as she entered. The movement was smooth, assured. She didn’t look back as she answered. “Why not? You offered.”
“It’s just… usually there’s more…” He fumbled for the right word, following her inside and closing the door. The silence of the vast apartment enveloped them.
“More what? Wasted time?” She turned then, her dark eyes catching the ambient glow from the windows. A smile played on her lips, but it wasn’t the teasing one from the office. This was cooler, more analytical. “This is all a foreign adventure to me, Anzelm. I’m here for a year. Maybe two. There’s no time or need for lengthy romance. We’re both adults. We know what this is.”
Her bluntness was a bucket of cold water and a shot of adrenaline all at once. It stripped away the facile fantasy he’d been cultivating, leaving the stark, thrilling architecture of the real thing. He watched her as she finally took in the space.
The penthouse was Iza’s masterpiece. Flawless white marble floors reflected the skyline. A wall of abstract art in brutal strokes of black and crimson dominated the living area. The furniture was sparse, intentional: a low, sleek sofa of black leather, a single red chaise lounge like a splash of blood on snow, nothing out of place. It smelled of lemon polish, Iza’s faint, elusive perfume, and the cold, clean scent of money.
Anna walked through it like a cat surveying new territory. She ran a finger along the back of the chaise, peered at the art, stopped before the window to gaze down at the serpentine glow of the Vistula. Her reflection in the glass was a ghost over the city.
“It’s very her,” Anna stated, not asking. “Control. Style. No clutter.” She turned from the view and looked directly at him. The directness of it stole his breath. “Where does she like to sit when she reads?”
The question was so intimate, so invasive, it felt like a physical touch. “The chaise,” he heard himself say. “With the lamplight from the corner.”
Anna nodded, as if filing the information away. She closed the distance between them slowly, her trainers silent on the stone. When she was inches away, she lifted her hands and began to undo the buttons of his shirt. Her fingers were deft, unhurried.
“And your rituals?” she asked, her eyes on her work. “Coffee in the morning. Who makes it?”
“I do,” Anzelm said, his voice tight. The back of his neck prickled. “She showers first. I bring it to her while she’s at the dressing table.”
The shirt was open. She pushed it off his shoulders, letting it fall to the floor. Her palms were warm and dry as they smoothed over his shoulders, down his chest. “The rules of your new game,” she continued, her tone conversational, almost clinical. “Just no feelings. Is that it? Anything else forbidden?”
He swallowed. “No. That’s it. Just that.”
“Practical.” Her hands went to his belt buckle. The rasp of leather through metal was loud in the quiet. “So she could be with someone right now, too. In your bed, perhaps?”
The image—Mikołaj’s pale blue eyes in his bedroom, Iza’s laugh against his own pillows—flashed behind his eyes, hot and jarring. “Yes.”
“And that excites you.” It wasn’t a question. She undid his trousers, pushed them down. He stepped out of them, feeling more naked under her gaze than he ever had physically. The verbal undressing was far more profound. She was mapping his marriage, his life, with these pointed questions, and he was letting her, arousal coiling tight in his gut with every answer.
“It does,” he admitted, the confession raw.
She finally looked up at his face, her own still framed by that clever, composed smile. She took his hand and led him to the black leather sofa. She pushed him down onto it. The leather was cool against his skin. She stood before him, then slowly, provocatively, began to remove her own clothes. Not with a performer’s flourish, but with the same deliberate efficiency she did everything.
“Tell me,” she said, stepping out of her jeans, “what you like.”
He told her. In blunt, hungry sentences. The words felt dangerous, illicit. She listened, her head tilted, and when he finished, she moved.
She climbed onto him, straddling his lap, her knees sinking into the soft leather on either side of his hips. Her body was toned and strong, a runner’s body, and she used that strength now to control the pace, the angle, the depth. She was a silhouette against the windowed cityscape, a realm of power atop him.
Her words didn’t stop. They were whispers against his ear, declarations against his mouth. “You wanted a thrill,” she breathed, moving with a rhythm that was utterly hers. “Is this unpredictable enough for you?” Her hands were on his wrists, pinning them to the back of the sofa, not because he was resisting, but because she wanted to demonstrate that she could. “Your comfortable life. Does it feel comfortable now?”
He could only gasp, his hips rising to meet her, each thrust a surrender to her calculated domination. This wasn’t the gentle, familiar syncopation of his marriage. This was a contest, and she was winning with every roll of her hips, every sharp, insightful word. The intellectual undressing had become a physical one, and he was laid bare, completely at her mercy. The excitement was a fire in his veins.
He loved it. He loved the loss of control, the sheer, audacious nerve of her. He loved that she saw his life, his marriage, his game, and had simply decided to play it better than he did. When the climax broke over him, it was with a force that was closer to violence than release, a wave of pure, shocking sensation that tore a ragged sound from his throat.
She held him through it, her body taut, her own breath coming in short, sharp gasps against his shoulder. Slowly, the tension bled from her limbs. She loosened her grip on his wrists but didn’t move away. The only sound was their breathing and the faint, distant hum of the city below.
In the quiet aftermath, with the sweat cooling on his skin and her weight a comforting pressure on his thighs, the reality of it all settled in the room around them. The abstract art stared down, indifferent. The red chaise waited. Somewhere in the city, Iza was living her own version of this evening.
Anna shifted, finally lifting her head to look at him. Her eyes were dark, unreadable pools. She traced the line of his goatee with a single finger.
“See?” she said softly, the British accent crisp in the stillness. “No lengthy romance required.”
And Anzelm, his heart still hammering against his ribs, knew with a terrifying clarity that the thrilling game he had suggested had just become exponentially more complicated. He had not just opened a door. He had invited a storm inside.
The storm, for now, was a quiet, breathing warmth against his chest. Anna eventually slid off him, the leather sighing in relief. She stood, a pale figure in the dark room, and picked his discarded shirt from the floor. She slipped her arms into it, the cotton hanging loosely on her frame, covering her to mid-thigh. The casual intimacy of the gesture, claiming that piece of him, felt more significant than what they’d just done.
She sat beside him on the sofa, not touching, and leaned her head back. The city’s glow etched the lines of her profile.
“So,” she said, her voice husky but clear. “No feelings. Is that rule for you, or for her?”
He turned his head to look at her. The office persona was gone, the competitive teasing stripped away. This was someone else, someone assessing the architecture of his life with a frightening, quiet acuity. “For both of us. It’s the only rule.”
“Seems like the hardest one to enforce.” She brought her knees up, folding herself into the corner of the sofa. The shirt collar gaped, revealing the sharp line of her collarbone. “You can’t just… switch it off.”
“You think we’re naive.” It wasn’t an accusation.
“I think you’re optimistic.” She finally glanced at him, a faint smile touching her lips. “Or terrified of being bored. Which is it?”
“Both.” The admission came easier now, in the dark. “Weren’t you? Bored?”
“Lonely, more than bored.” She looked back at the windows. “It’s different, being a temporary person in a city. Everyone’s life here is a finished book. You’re just a footnote in someone else’s chapter. This…” she gestured vaguely between them, “…is a much more interesting paragraph.”
Before he could dissect that, the soft chime of the elevator arriving in their private foyer cut through the apartment.
Anzelm froze. A cold jolt, entirely separate from the earlier heat, shot down his spine. It was too early for Iza. Mikołaj’s evening class ran late. Anna went perfectly still beside him, her sharp eyes snapping to his, reading the alarm there.
The main door opened.
Light from the hallway spilled in, outlining Iza’s familiar silhouette. She dropped her gym bag with a soft thud, kicked off her heels, and padded into the living room on bare feet. She flicked on a single, low floor lamp. Its glow illuminated her: the sharp black bob, the tight black tank top, the glow of sweat still on her skin. She smelled of the gym’s ozone and her own bergamot scent.
She stopped when she saw them.
Anzelm’s mind blanked. Anna, beside him, had gone rigid. She subtly pulled the edges of the shirt tighter around her legs, a flush rising on her neck. The confident woman from minutes ago had vanished, replaced by someone caught, exposed.
Iza’s green eyes took in the scene: her husband, bare-chested on their sofa. The young intern from his office, wearing only his shirt. The abstract painting. The city. Her expression didn’t fracture. It didn’t even flicker.
“Oh, good, you’re home,” she said, her voice light as she walked toward the kitchen. “I was hoping for a glass of wine. Mikołaj had a friend suddenly in town, so he begged off for Saturday. I figured I’d just come back.” She opened the wine fridge, the hum joining the low pulse of the city. “Anna, right? From the PR floor? The Champagne crisis memo was brilliant, by the way. Saved us from looking like total snobs.”
Anna stared. Her mouth opened slightly, then closed. She managed a faint, “Thank you.”
“Anzelm, the Malbec? Or the Pinot?” Iza called, holding up two bottles.
“The… the Malbec,” he stammered, his heart pounding against his ribs. This wasn’t shock, or anger. It was utter, mundane normality, and it was utterly destabilizing.
“Perfect.” Iza uncorked the bottle with a practised pop. She brought three glasses to the coffee table, setting them down with soft clicks. She poured, the deep red liquid catching the lamplight. She handed a glass to Anna first, then to Anzelm, before settling into the red chaise lounge, curling her legs beneath her. She took a sip, her eyes moving between them with open, amused curiosity.
“So,” Iza said, smiling. “How was it?”
The question hung in the air, so casual it seemed to suck the oxygen from the room. Anna’s grip tightened on her wine glass. Her knuckles were white. She was clearly weirded out, her earlier composure shattered by this bizarre, comfortable invasion.
But Anzelm saw something else shift in her eyes as she looked from Iza’s relaxed form to his own stunned face. The shock was melting into a dawning, intense fascination. Iza was talking to them as if they’d met for a casual drink, as if the entire foundation of this encounter wasn’t seismic. It was a performance of normalcy so complete it became its own kind of power play.
Anna took a slow sip of wine, her gaze never leaving Iza. “It was… educational,” she said finally, her British accent precise. A hint of her earlier steel returned.
Iza laughed, a warm, genuine sound. “That’s one word for it.” She looked at Anzelm, her green eyes sparkling with something unreadable. “And you, my love? Learn anything new?”
He looked at his wife, then at Anna, who was watching him from behind the safety of the wine glass, captivated by the strange theatre of it all. The rules felt both confirmed and utterly rewritten in this moment. The game was no longer played in separate rooms.
It was right here, in the open, with three glasses of red wine and a terrifying, casual smile. The storm wasn't outside. It was sitting in his living room, asking for a refill.
It was sitting in his living room, asking for a refill.
“I learned that you have terrifying timing,” Anzelm said, the wine glass cool and slick in his hand. He took a long drink, the Malbec bursting bold and spicy on his tongue, a welcome anchor. “And that your gym sessions end early when a pianist has prior commitments.”
Iza’s smile didn’t waver. She swirled her glass, watching the legs slide down the crystal. “Mikołaj is very dedicated to his friends. It’s one of his better qualities.” She said it plainly, a simple fact, but it landed in the room with the weight of a stone. Anna’s eyes darted to Anzelm, watching for the ripple. He kept his face still, a PR professional’s mask, but his stomach tightened.
The silence stretched, thin and taut. It was broken by the soft rustle of cotton as Anna shifted, pulling the shirt hem further down her thighs. The gesture was self-conscious, a stark contrast to her earlier command. Iza noted it, her gaze tracking the movement with a designer’s appraisal.
“So, Anna,” Iza began, leaning forward to set her glass down. “The infamous memo. How did you know the client’s daughter was allergic to the gold leaf in the bottle foil? That wasn’t in the briefing packet.”
Anna blinked, thrown by the pivot to shop talk. “Instagram,” she said, her voice regaining some of its natural, crisp tone. “She’d posted a hospital bracelet story six months ago. Tagged a dermatology clinic. The caption mentioned ‘my precious metal nightmare.’ I cross-referenced.”
“Clever.” Iza’s approval seemed genuine. She stood then, smooth and unhurried, and walked around the coffee table. She didn’t stop at Anna. She came to Anzelm, who was still seated, frozen on the leather. She placed a hand on his bare shoulder. Her skin was warm from the wine, her touch familiar yet completely alien in this context.
She bent down.
Her lips met his, a firm, possessive press. She tasted of dark fruit and the faint, metallic hint of her lipstick. It was a kiss that claimed, that announced, that delineated borders in this new, unmapped territory. Anzelm’s mind went white. Behind Iza, he saw Anna watching, utterly still, her wine forgotten in her hand.
Iza pulled back, her green eyes inches from his hazel ones. A playful, wicked light danced in them. She laughed, a soft, private sound.
“You know,” she said, her voice a conspiratorial whisper meant for all of them, “I really thought I’d be the first one to have sex with someone else.” She straightened up, smiling at her own joke, then turned to Anna.
Her gaze swept over the younger woman, taking in the tousled black hair, the intelligent eyes wide with shock, the strong lines of her body barely concealed by the oversized shirt. It was an assessment, thorough and blunt.
“He undersold you,” Iza stated, the humor softening into something like sincere appreciation. “You’re even prettier than how Anzelm described you.”