Chapter 2: Emergency Brake Protocol
The fluorescent lights of the marketing bay felt like an interrogation. Nikki slid into her chair, the plastic letting out a soft squeak that seemed obscenely loud. The ghost of Srikanth’s mouth was a brand on her skin, a tight, singing memory beneath her silk blouse. She opened the Kellerman presentation file. The digital slides swam before her eyes, colorless and lifeless.
She shifted in her seat and a bolt of raw sensation shot through her. It wasn’t pain. It was an echo, a deep, resonant thrum that turned her insides liquid. She pressed her thighs together under the desk, a faint, uncontrollable tremor running through her. Get a grip, she commanded herself. You have a 4:30 review.
But her mind kept replaying the feel of cardboard against her spine, the sound of his breath, the deliberate, shocking pressure of his teeth. Her fingers, poised over the keyboard, trembled. She balled them into fists.
An hour later, the review was a qualified success. She’d been sharp, if a little distant, her replies clipped. The marks on her skin felt like a secret source of power, a dangerous fuel. As she packed her laptop away, she saw him. Srikanth was leaning against the doorframe of the server room, sixty feet away, in deep conversation with a infrastructure lead. He hadn’t glanced her way once.
The dissonance was dizzying.
She took the stairs, needing the physical burn in her calves to ground her. By the time she pushed open the door to the parking garage level, her heart was pounding from the exertion, not from him. The elevator stood waiting, a steel box promising a slow descent to the basement. She stepped inside, hitting the ‘B’ button with more force than necessary.
The doors began to close.
A hand shot between them. They hissed open again.
Srikanth stepped in, his posture relaxed, as if it were the most ordinary coincidence in the world. The doors sealed shut with a final, heavy click. The motor engaged with a low groan, and the car began its shuddering descent.
The silence was total, and thicker than the air in the supply closet. The only sound was the rhythmic thump-thump of cables passing floor joints overhead. The light in the elevator was famously bad—a single, flickering strip that cast jumpy shadows across his face.
Nikki stared straight ahead at the brushed steel doors, watching the floor numbers illuminate in slow sequence: 7… 6…
“So,” she said, her voice sounding too loud in the small space. “You just happen to be heading to the garage too.”
“I park in the garage,” he replied evenly. His hands were in his pockets. He was looking at the door, but she could feel his attention like a physical weight on the side of her face.
“Right.” The elevator passed the 5th floor. She couldn’t stand it. The memory of his mouth was a live wire under her skin. She turned to him. “What was that, earlier?”
He finally looked at her. The flickering light made his hazel eyes seem to change color, from gold to green to a dark, unreadable brown. “What was what?”
“Don’t.” The word came out sharper than she intended. “Don’t do that. The… the biting.”
A slow, almost imperceptible smile touched his lips. “You didn’t like it?”
She flushed. That was the problem. She’d liked it too much. It had unmoored her. “That’s not the point. It’s… it’s a thing. A specific thing. And you just… did it. In a supply closet.”
He shifted, leaning his shoulder against the wall of the car, studying her. “I observed a possibility,” he said, his voice low. “And I inventoried it.”
The elevator passed the 3rd floor. Her heart was thudding against her ribs again. “Is that what you call it? Inventory?”
“It’s a precise term. It implies careful assessment of… available assets.” His gaze dropped, just for a second, to the waistband of her skirt.
Anger and a wild, thrilling panic mixed in her throat. “I’m not an asset. And you’re obsessed.”
“With you?” The question hung in the air, stark and simple.
The elevator dinged, passing the 2nd floor. One more floor to go. The momentum of the descent seemed to pull at her. “With the biting,” she clarified, though her voice had lost its edge.
He pushed off from the wall. He took one step toward her. Then another. The space, never large, vanished. He was close enough now that she could see the faint line of stubble along his jaw, the dark fan of his lashes. The air grew warm, dense with the scent of him—clean cotton and something beneath, something inherently Srikanth.
“Maybe,” he murmured, his eyes on hers, “I’m just taking stock of what reacts.”
Before she could form a retort, his hand shot out. Not toward her, but past her shoulder, to the panel of buttons. His long finger pressed the red ‘STOP’ button.
A jolt ran through the car. The humming motor died abruptly, replaced by a dead, ringing silence. The flickering light steadied into a sickly, constant glow. They were suspended between floors, trapped in a silent, static box.
Nikki’s breath caught. “What are you doing?”
“Checking something.” His voice was calm, maddeningly practical.
He dropped to his knees.
The world narrowed to the sight of him there, on the dusty elevator floor, looking up at her. His hands came to rest on her hips, his touch firm and sure through the thin silk of her blouse. His thumbs hooked under the material, easing it up, revealing the skin he had marked just an hour before. The air against the tender flesh was cold. She shivered.
He studied the faint, red traces of his teeth with a critical, absorbed expression. Then he leaned in. She expected his mouth, his tongue. Instead, she felt the warm brush of his exhale. He was looking at the small silver hoop pierced through her navel. She’d forgotten about it entirely.
“This,” he said, his voice a vibration she felt in her bones. “This is a complication.”
Before she could ask what he meant, he dipped his head. His lips closed over the silk, dampening the fabric, pulling it taut against the metal of the ring. The sensation was bizarre, indirect. Then he bit down.
The pressure was not on her skin, but on the ring itself, transmitted through the wet silk. The metal pinched, a sharp, crystalline point of sensation surrounded by the broader pressure of his teeth. It was strange, almost clinical, and utterly, devastatingly intimate. He held the bite, his jaw clamped, his eyes closed. She could see the tension in the cord of his neck.
A small, punched-out sound escaped her. Her hands flew to his head, her fingers sliding into his dark hair. She didn’t push him away. She held on.
He released the bite, leaving the silk blotched with damp. He nuzzled the spot, his nose pressing against her. “Definitely a complication,” he murmured, his breath hot through the wet fabric. “Requires further analysis.”
He didn’t move. He stayed there, on his knees, his face inches from her stomach, his breathing slow and deep. She was trembling, her whole body a plucked wire. The silence was absolute, a vacuum. All she could hear was the rush of her own blood.
The elevator intercom crackled to life with a loud, startling static. A tinny voice filled the car. “Elevator Four, we show you’ve triggered an emergency stop. Everything okay in there?”
Srikanth’s eyes opened. He looked up at her, a flicker of something unguarded—amusement, challenge, raw hunger—in his gaze. He held a finger to his lips.
Nikki swallowed, trying to find her voice. “Fine!” she called out, her voice unnaturally bright. “My… my bag strap got caught in the door. Sorry! All good.”
A pause. “You’re between two and three. Release the button and you’ll continue down.”
“Will do. Thanks.”
The intercom clicked off.
The dead silence returned, heavier now.
Srikanth slowly, deliberately, pressed his mouth once more to the damp silk over her navel ring—not a bite, but a slow, open-mouthed kiss that seared through the material. Then he stood up, smooth and unhurried. He reached over her shoulder and twisted the red button. It popped out.
The motor engaged with a shudder. The lights flickered back to life. The descent resumed.
They rode the last floor in silence. The doors slid open on the stark concrete and dim light of the parking garage. The mundane smell of exhaust and damp concrete washed over them.
He stepped out first, holding the door for her. She walked past him, her legs unsure. The cool garage air was a shock against her heated skin.
He fell into step beside her as she walked toward her car. The rhythm of their footsteps echoed.
“Further analysis,” he said, as casually as if suggesting a coffee, “requires a dedicated environment. Fewer interruptions.”
She stopped at her car door, fumbling for her keys. She didn’t look at him. “My apartment. Tomorrow. Eight.”
She heard the soft rustle of his clothes as he nodded. “I’ll bring my tools.”
She finally risked a glance. He was already walking away, his hands back in his pockets, a faint, confident set to his shoulders. He didn’t look back.
She slid into her car, the door closing with a solid thunk that sealed her into a new kind of quiet. She sat there, hands on the steering wheel, staring at the concrete wall ahead. The place where his teeth had pressed the metal against her skin throbbed with a low, insistent heat. She touched her stomach through her blouse, feeling the damp spot, the persistent ache.
Tomorrow. Eight. The words hung in the silent car, a promise and a threat. She started the engine, the mundane roar sounding alien. As she drove up the ramp toward the evening light, the memory of the dead, suspended silence of the elevator felt more real than the open road ahead.