Chapter 2: Wall-Climbed and Devoured
He didn’t stand up. He didn’t even look ashamed. Vamsi simply turned his head slowly toward the voice, his body still caged around Nikki’s legs, his mouth hovering inches from her bare skin. His expression was one of pure, irritated distraction, like someone had spoken during the climax of a film.
“We’re busy,” he said, his voice low and flat, not even looking at Lena.
“Yeah, I can see that.” Lena’s voice was dry, but it held an edge. “Nikki? You want to be busy?”
Nikki’s mind was a scramble of pain, shock, and a desperate, crawling embarrassment. Her pants were tugged down, his hands were on her hips, and her neighbor was holding two mugs of tea in the doorway. The contrast was so violently absurd a hysterical laugh caught in her throat. She pushed weakly at Vamsi’s shoulders. “Get up.”
He studied her face, his dark eyes searching for something. Reluctance, maybe. Or a sign to continue. He must have seen only panic because he finally released her, his hands sliding away from her skin with a slow, deliberate drag. He rose to his feet in one smooth motion, looking completely unbothered. He even adjusted the cuff of his shirt.
Nikki yanked her pants up, her fingers fumbling with the button. The fabric scraped against the fresh bite and she hissed, a sharp, involuntary sound. The mark felt wet. She looked down. A tiny, perfect bead of blood welled in the very center of the bruise, a dark jewel against the inflamed skin.
“You’re bleeding,” Lena said, her tone shifting from sarcasm to genuine concern. She set the mugs down on a hallway console table with a clatter.
“It’s nothing,” Nikki breathed, pressing the hem of her tank top against it. The white cotton would stain. The thought was stupidly, overwhelmingly tragic.
Vamsi watched her, his head tilted. “It’s not nothing.” He said it as a simple fact, like noting the weather.
“What is wrong with you?” Lena stepped forward, putting herself partly between Nikki and Vamsi. “You can’t just… bite people. That’s not a thing normal humans do.”
“I wasn’t talking to you.” Vamsi’s gaze never left Nikki. “Are you okay?”
Was she? Her stomach was on fire. Her legs felt like water. Her entire history with this man had just been rewritten in toothmarks. “I don’t know,” she said truthfully. Her voice sounded small.
“She’s not okay,” Lena stated, crossing her arms. “She’s standing in her hallway looking like a car crash victim. You should go.”
Vamsi ignored Lena completely. He took a step closer, his voice dropping to that intimate, rough register that seemed to vibrate in Nikki’s bones. “You tasted it. The moment. Don’t pretend you didn’t.”
He was right. That was the terrifying part. Beneath the shock and the sting, a thread of pure, unadulterated lightning had connected his teeth to her core. It had been real. She swallowed, unable to deny it.
Lena grabbed Nikki’s arm. “Hey. No. Do not get sucked into his weird, vampire-adjacent vortex. This is how you end up on a podcast.”
Vamsi finally acknowledged Lena. A faint, cold smile touched his lips. “We’re colleagues. We’re friends. We had a moment. It got intense. It’s over.” He said it so reasonably, so cleanly, that it almost made sense.
“Intense?” Lena gestured wildly at Nikki’s midsection. “She’s bleeding!”
“It’s a surface abrasion.” He shrugged, a graceful roll of his shoulders. “The body reacts. It’s chemistry.”
Nikki finally found her voice. It felt rusty. “Chemistry doesn’t usually draw blood, Vamsi.”
“Sometimes it does.” He reached out, not to touch her, but to tap his own sternum, right over his heart. “Sometimes it’s the only way to prove it’s real. To make it stick.”
His phone buzzed in his pocket. The sound was jarring in the tense quiet of the hallway. He pulled it out, glanced at the screen, and a flicker of something—annoyance, duty—crossed his face. The real world, intruding.
“I have to take this.” He didn’t move to leave, just looked at Nikki. “Monday. We’ll talk.”
“We have the Bradley presentation,” she repeated her own stupid line from earlier, a pathetic anchor to normality.
“We’ll talk before,” he said. It wasn’t a question. He took a step toward the door, then paused. His eyes traveled down her body one last time, lingering on the spot where her hand was clamped over her stomach. “Put something on that. Antibiotic ointment.”
And then he was gone, pulling the door shut behind him with a soft, final click.
The silence he left behind was different this time. It was charged, fractured. Lena immediately rushed over, pulling Nikki’s hand away from her shirt. “Let me see.”
In the harsh overhead light of the hallway, the bite looked even more savage. The twin arcs of teeth were stark, the center broken and beaded with red. The surrounding skin was an angry, mottled purple. “Jesus, Nikki. This is… this is assault.”
“It wasn’t,” Nikki whispered, but the word lacked conviction.
“He hurt you. Without asking.”
“I didn’t tell him to stop.” Admitting it felt like stepping off a cliff.
Lena’s face softened. “Would he have listened if you did?”
Nikki thought of the relentless pressure, the single-minded focus in his eyes. She remembered her fingers pulling his hair, not pushing him away. “I don’t know.”
“Right.” Lena let out a long breath. “Okay. First, we clean this. Then, we drink that tea which is now cold, and you tell me every single detail, starting with the goddamn popcorn.”
She led Nikki into the bathroom, turning on the bright lights. The clinical white tiles made Nikki feel exposed, like a specimen. Lena rummaged in the cabinet, finding antiseptic and a tube of ointment.
The sting of the antiseptic made Nikki gasp, her eyes watering. It was a clean, sharp pain, so different from the deep, throbbing ache his teeth had left. “He said he forgot the taste,” she said numbly, watching Lena’s careful hands.
“Romantic,” Lena deadpanned, dabbing gently. “A real poet. He forgot the taste so he came back for a second helping. Like a cannibal with a frequent diner card.”
A laugh burst out of Nikki, sudden and shaky. It bordered on a sob. “It’s not funny.”
“It’s seriously not,” Lena agreed, applying the ointment. “But if I don’t joke, I’m going to go over there and kick his car. Which is still an option, by the way.” She glanced out the small bathroom window. “Yep. Still parked.”
A new kind of chill went through Nikki. He was just sitting out there. Waiting? Watching? Her phone, still clutched in her other hand, felt like a live wire.
As if on cue, it buzzed. A text. V.
Lena saw it. “Don’t you dare.”
Nikki’s thumb hovered over the screen. The need to know what he would say was a physical pull, almost as strong as the ache in her skin.
She opened it.
A single photo filled the screen. It was taken from his perspective, looking down. It was the mark on her stomach, the fresh bite, glossy with ointment under the bathroom lights. He must have taken it just before he left, when she’d lifted her shirt for Lena.
The caption below read: Don’t cover it up.
Nikki dropped the phone into the sink with a clatter as if it had burned her. It bounced against the porcelain. Lena snatched it up, looked, and her face went pale.
“That’s it,” she said, her voice deathly quiet. “I’m calling the police.”
“No!” The word was out of Nikki’s mouth before she could think. “No police.”
“Why not? He’s threatening you. He’s harassing you.”
“It’s… complicated.” Nikki took the phone back, her hand trembling. “We work together. The Bradley account… my promotion review is next month. If I make a scene…”
“Making a scene? Nikki, he bit you. He took a picture of it!”
“I know!” Nikki’s voice cracked. She stared at her reflection in the mirror—pale, wide-eyed, a red mark like a secret stamped on her skin. “I know what it is. But I also… I didn’t stop him, Lena. My body didn’t want to stop him. What does that say about me?”
Lena sighed, leaning against the sink. “It says you’re human and he’s a hot, confusing bastard who flipped a switch you didn’t know you had. It doesn’t mean he gets to decide what happens next.”
Nikki looked back at the text. Don’t cover it up. It was a command. A challenge. Her thumb moved over the keyboard.
What happens on Monday?
The reply was immediate. What do you want to happen?
Her breath caught. The power of the question was immense. He was handing it back to her. Or was he testing her? She typed slowly, her heart hammering.
I don’t know.
His answer came a moment later. Yes, you do.
Outside, a car engine turned over. Through the window, they saw his headlights flare to life. He didn’t drive away immediately. The car just sat there, idling, a silent predator at the curb.
Then, his final message arrived.
I’ll see you at work. Wear a high neck. Keep your desk tidy. And Nikki?
She waited, her blood pounding in her ears.
Don’t be late.
The car finally pulled away, its taillights disappearing into the wet night. The hallway, the living room, the entire apartment felt hollowed out and charged, all at once. The abandoned movie had long since gone to screensaver, colorful shapes morphing silently on the television.
Lena put an arm around her shoulders. “Come on. Cold tea. No more phone.”
They sat on the ruined sofa. The indentation from his body was still there. Nikki curled into the opposite corner, pulling a blanket over herself, hiding the stain on her tank top.
“He wants me to… want it,” Nikki said, staring into her lukewarn tea.
“Maybe part of you does,” Lena said, not unkindly. “That’s okay. It’s the other parts that need to be loudest right now.”
Nikki’s fingers crept under the blanket, tracing the raised, painful outline of his teeth. It was a map of a border she never knew existed, now violently crossed. Monday was a gulf, a terrifying expanse of normalcy she had to cross while carrying this secret, this wound.
She thought of the Bradley presentation, of Vamsi across the conference room table in his crisp shirt and easy smile. She thought of his hands clicking through slides, his voice calm and persuasive. And she thought of his mouth, silent and relentless, forming a different, darker kind of persuasion on her skin.
The ache was already deepening into a proper bruise. She pressed on it, hard, until she saw stars. A tear finally escaped, tracing a hot path down her cheek. It wasn’t from the pain.
It was from the terrifying, thrilling certainty that a part of her was already counting the hours until she saw him again.