Chapter 3: Ascent into Torment
The scent of jasmine and shame clung to Frank for days. It followed him from the rooftop garden down into the marble halls of the penthouse, a ghost in his nostrils. He moved through the rooms like a draft, tidying, organizing, ensuring everything was perfect for when they might glance his way. The memory of the guests’ polished shoes, so close to his kneeling form, replayed behind his eyes every time he blinked.
On Thursday afternoon, Olivia found him polishing the glass table in the living room. “Come,” she said, her voice devoid of instruction. It was a command wrapped in silk. “We’re going out. You can carry the packages.”
Damian was already at the private elevator, holding the door. He wore a smirk that didn’t touch his dark eyes. “Don’t dawdle, Frank. We haven’t got all day.”
The elevator was a sleek, mirrored box. Frank stepped in last, the doors sighing shut behind him, enclosing them in a infinite reflection of the three of them. He saw himself replicated into a corridor of tired-looking men in cheap chinos, dwarfed by the duplicated images of Damian’s broad shoulders and Olivia’s vibrant hair. The air was chilled, smelling of ozone and cleaner.
They stood in silence as the car began its descent. Then Olivia shifted. She leaned back against the wall, her eyes on Frank’s reflection.
“You’ve been quiet since the garden,” she said. Her tone was conversational, light. “Not brooding, are you?”
Frank shook his head, staring at the numbered panel as it counted down the floors. “No. No, of course not.”
“Good.” She pushed off the wall and in two steps was in front of him. The elevator was not large. Her perfume, something expensive and floral, vaporized the last memory of jasmine. She didn’t touch him, but her proximity pinned him to the mirrored surface behind him. The cold glass seeped through his shirt.
Damian watched, arms crossed, a spectator enjoying a familiar play.
“Because we’d hate to think you were ungrateful,” Olivia murmured, her green eyes scanning his face. “For the attention. For the… intimacy.”
She placed a hand flat on the mirror beside his head. Then she leaned her body into his. It was not an embrace. It was a claim. The soft warmth of her pressed against his chest, his stomach. He stopped breathing.
“Liv,” Damian chuckled softly from the other side of the car. “You’ll get him over-excited. Look at his face.”
Frank’s reflection showed a mask of terror and yearning, his cheeks flushed. Olivia smiled, a slow, cruel curve of her lips. She began to move, a subtle, grinding rotation of her hips against him. The friction was exquisite agony. Through the layers of fabric, he could feel every contour of her. His body, the eternal traitor, responded instantly, helplessly.
“See?” she whispered, her breath hot against his ear. “This is all it takes. This is all you’ll ever get.”
The elevator continued its silent drop. The numbers clicked off: 30… 25… 20. Frank clenched his jaw, trying to think of anything else—cold water, broken glass, static—but her smell, her heat, the dizzying sight of their multiplied forms all around him was a vortex. He was hard, painfully so, a fact showcased in the endless mirrors.
Olivia’s movements became more deliberate, more rhythmic. A soft, breathy sound escaped her, a performance for an audience of two. She buried her face in the crook of his neck, her lips brushing his skin as she spoke.
“You’d give anything, wouldn’t you?” Her whisper was a serpent’s coil. “Anything to be the one driving into me against that glass. To have everyone see you as the man. But you’re not a man, Frank. You’re a tool. A useful, desperate tool.”
Tears of humiliation pricked at his eyes. He couldn’t suppress a small, involuntary buck of his own hips, seeking more pressure. She laughed, a low, vibrating sound against his collar bone.
“Pathetic,” she sighed, almost affectionately.
The elevator pinged. Lobby. The number lit up.
In that instant, she went utterly still. She pulled her face back, her expression transforming from sultry provocateur to polite neutrality in a heartbeat. She stepped back, smoothing her dress.
The doors began to slide open, revealing the gleaming marble lobby, the concierge desk, a couple waiting to ascend.
And Olivia, looking directly into Frank’s wide, devastated eyes, finished her whisper. The words were so quiet they were almost just a shaping of air, but he heard them with perfect, shattering clarity.
“You’ll die wanting me.”
Then she turned, a brilliant, welcoming smile already on her face for the waiting neighbors. “Marjorie! How are you? Love your bag.”
Damian clapped a heavy hand on Frank’s shoulder, steering his frozen form out of the elevator. “Got a bit of a stomach cramp, this one,” he said to the older man waiting, his voice jovial. “Needed the wall to hold him up. You know how it is.”
Frank stumbled forward. The physical release he’d been wound towards was now a twisted, aching knot in his gut. His body hummed with unused adrenaline, a scream trapped in his muscles. He was painfully, visibly aroused, and had to clutch the small package Damian handed him to try and conceal it.
The neighbor woman, Marjorie, glanced at him with brief, detached pity. “Too much coffee, dear?” she offered, before turning back to Olivia, laughing at something she’d said.
They moved through the bright, public space, Olivia and Damian a beautiful, united front, full of easy chatter. Frank followed, a pace behind, a servant carrying a burden. The taste of her perfume was in his mouth. The echo of her words in his skull.
You’ll die wanting me.
It wasn’t a threat. It was a prophecy. And as he watched her red hair swing, saw her hand casually slip into Damian’s back pocket, he knew with a certainty that chilled him deeper than the elevator’s mirror, that she was right. He would. The doors to the street opened, flooding the lobby with chaotic city light and sound. He followed them out, into the world where they were a golden couple and he was a ghost, still feeling the phantom grind of her hips, the cold glass on his back, and the devastating void where release should have been.