Chapter 14: Alone in the Dark
The quiet after he left became a tangible thing. It pressed against Hadley’s eardrums, a thick silence broken only by the occasional groan of the old building’s pipes. The scent of him—cedar, clean sweat, the ghost of Vittorio’s kitchen—was everywhere. It was on her skin where he’d kissed her palm, woven into the green blanket, clinging to the lavender sprigs of her dress where his hand had rested on her back.
She moved through the small apartment on autopilot. She washed the single mug, her hands moving slowly in the warm soapy water. She folded the blanket, then unfolded it and wrapped it around her shoulders again. The adrenaline of the evening, of the decision, was fading, leaving behind a raw, humming energy that had nowhere to go.
The bed was a rumpled mess from her restless night before. She sat on its edge, toeing off her shoes. The digital clock on the nightstand glowed 11:37 PM. He’d be home by now, in that stark, modern apartment the papers loved to photograph. Was he staring at his ceiling too? Was the quiet just as loud for him?
She slid under the covers, still in her dress. The cotton was soft, worn thin from countless washes. She lay on her back, staring at the faint crack in the plaster above her that looked like a river on a map. Her body felt strangely awake, thrumming with a low current. Every point of contact from the evening replayed on a loop. The pressure of his hand on hers. The brush of his suit jacket against her arm in the alley. The devastating warmth of his lips on her palm.
A flush spread from her chest up her neck. She turned onto her side, pulling the pillow close. It smelled like her shampoo. It wasn’t enough.
Her own breathing sounded too loud in the room. The memory wasn’t just in her mind now; it had sunk into her muscles, pooled low in her belly. A sharp, wanting ache. She tried to ignore it, to think about the shop, about the orders for tomorrow. But her mind kept supplying the image: his focused eyes in the candlelight, the rough timbre of his voice reciting those lines, the way his throat worked when he swallowed his wine.
“Fuck,” she whispered into the pillow.
Her own curse seemed to break a seal. The polite pretense of just being tired evaporated. The need was physical, impatient. It was in the tight feeling of her nipples against the cotton dress, in the involuntary clench of her thighs.
She rolled onto her back again, one hand slipping beneath the waistband of her underwear. Her skin was hot. She let her fingertips trail through the soft, damp curls, a shudder moving through her. This was hers, private, but tonight it felt tied to him. To the unspoken promise in his touch, the hungry way he’d looked at her when she’d tasted the food.
She closed her eyes.
Not some vague fantasy. She brought him into the room with brutal clarity. She imagined him here, now, standing at the foot of her bed, watching her. Those storm-gray eyes wouldn’t be soft. They’d be dark, intense, taking in the sight of her hand under the covers. He’d say nothing. He’d just watch, his jaw tight, until the silence itself was a demand.
Her middle finger found her clit, already swollen and sensitive. She circled it slowly, a soft gasp escaping her lips. In her mind, he moved. He didn’t rush. He’d come to the side of the bed, his large frame blocking the light from the streetlamp outside. He’d place one knee on the mattress, the springs groaning under his weight.
“Show me,” his voice growled in her imagination, low and rough, the way it got when he was tired. It wasn’t a request.
A moan caught in her throat. Her hips lifted off the mattress, seeking the pressure of her own touch. She quickened the circles, her other hand fisting in the sheet.
In the fantasy, he caught that hand. He pinned it above her head, his fingers interlacing with hers, holding her still. “I said, show me.”
She imagined pushing the covers down, revealing herself to that hungry gaze. Her dress rucked up around her waist. Her own hand moving faster, wetter, between her legs. Her breath came in short, sharp pants.
“That’s it,” his phantom voice urged, closer now. She could almost feel his breath on her neck. “Make yourself come. Let me see you.”
Her back arched. The sensations coiled tighter, a spring winding past its limit. She bit down hard on her lower lip to stifle the cry building in her chest. The pleasure was a sharp, bright wire pulled taut from her core to the tips of her fingers, to the roots of her hair. She pictured his face above hers, the control in his features shattered, replaced by a raw, possessive need. She imagined him saying filthy, beautiful things about how wet she was, how he was going to fuck her until she couldn’t remember her own name.
The orgasm broke over her in a sudden, violent wave. It ripped the air from her lungs. Her thighs trembled. Her vision whited out at the edges as she rode the frantic pulses of her own hand, the fantasy and reality fusing into one blinding point of release.
It took long seconds for the world to seep back in. The sound of her own ragged breathing. The cool air on her damp skin. The faint smell of lavender and sex.
She went boneless, her hand falling away, resting on her stomach. Spent. The current was gone, leaving a deep, heavy warmth in its wake.
Into the empty, dark room, still throbbing with the echo of her heartbeat, she whispered it.
“Eli.”
The silence swallowed the name, but it felt like a truth etched into the air. She lay there, drifting, the empty space in the bed beside her feeling more defined than ever. It wasn’t just a space. It was a shape. It was his shape.
Down on the street, a car door slammed. She didn’t move. The storm was still holding its breath. But here, in the warm, tangled sheets, she had finally stopped waiting for it. She had stepped into the eye. And she had found her own quiet, desperate thunder.
And she had found her own quiet, desperate thunder.
Across the city, Eli’s bedroom was a study in minimalist silence. The sheets were stark white, high-thread-count, and perfectly tucked. A single low-wattage floor lamp cast long shadows across the bare walls. He stood at the floor-to-ceiling window, a glass of water in his hand, looking at the geometric grid of city lights. The quiet here was different. It was hollow. It was the silence of a well-designed cage.
He could still smell her. It was on his right hand, the one she’d held. He brought it to his face now, inhaling. Lavender, yes, from her shop. But underneath it was something warmer, uniquely her. Skin. He closed his eyes. The image of her in that cramped restaurant booth was burned onto the back of his eyelids. The way the candlelight had gilded the curve of her neck as she’d laughed. The tiny, focused frown as she’d twirled the pasta. The devastating trust in her eyes when she’d agreed to walk into the storm with him.
He took a swallow of water. It did nothing to cool the heat in his gut.
His body was tight with a restless, coiled energy. The kind he usually ran off on the pitch or pounded out in the gym. This was different. This wasn’t about exertion. It was about want. A deep, primal ache that had his cock hardening against his suit trousers, a relentless throb he’d ignored all evening. He’d kept it caged behind manners and movie quotes. Now, alone, the cage door was bending.
He set the glass down on the windowsill with a sharp click.
His fingers went to his belt. The leather hissed through the loops. The button of his trousers popped open. The zpper’s drone was obscenely loud in the silent room. He shoved the expensive fabric down over his hips, his erection springing free, already fully hard and aching. He wrapped his fist around the shaft, a rough, punishing grip. He leaned his forehead against the cool glass, the city sparkling, indifferent below.
He didn’t imagine vague, soft things. He imagined raw, specific ones. He pictured her on that rumpled bed he’d seen, the one that smelled like her. He imagined her in that lavender dress, but now it was pushed up around her waist. He saw her thighs, pale and smooth, falling open. For him.
“Fuck,” he groaned into the glass, his breath fogging it.
His hand began to move, a slow, brutal stroke. He didn’t gentle it. He imagined her watching him do this, her blue eyes wide and dark with the same hunger. He imagined her saying his name, not “Eli” but “Elias,” in that breathy, undone way he’d only heard in his head.
“You’re so wet for me, aren’t you?” he muttered, the words gritted out between clenched teeth. His pace increased. “I could smell it on you in the car. That sweet, filthy cunt.”
The fantasy tore forward, vivid and crude. He wasn’t a gentleman in it. He was a man starved. He saw himself pushing her knees back, spreading her wide. He imagined the sound she’d make when he first pushed his tongue inside her, when he ate her out until she came screaming. His balls tightened at the thought.
“You’d taste perfect,” he growled, his hips pumping into his fist. “You’d fucking taste like heaven. And I’d make you come on my mouth before I even let you feel my cock.”
Pre-come slicked his movements. The friction was almost too much, a sweet, sharp torture. He was close. He shifted the fantasy. He saw himself flipping her over, her face in that green blanket. He imagined hiking her hips up, spreading her cheeks, and pushing into her from behind in one deep, ruthless thrust.
“Take it,” he commanded the empty room, his voice ragged. “Take all of it, Haddie. You wanted the storm? This is it.”
His orgasm hit him like a physical blow. It tore a ragged shout from his throat, a sound that echoed off the sterile walls. He came in thick, hot stripes across the window glass, his body shuddering, vision blurring. He slumped forward, sweat cooling on his brow, his breathing a harsh scrape in the silence.
The intensity left him hollowed out. Empty. The city lights smeared through the mess on the window.
He looked at it, at the evidence of his loneliness given physical form. This wasn’t satisfaction. This was a confession. A pathetic, stickier echo of the connection he’d felt across a table hours before.
He cleaned up mechanically, a cold disgust settling in his bones. He hated this part. The emptiness after. The reminder that for all the adoration, the money, the noise, his world was this: a perfect, empty room and his own hand.
He pulled on a pair of black sweatpants and fell onto the bed, not bothering with the sheets. The ceiling was blank. He thought of her whispered name in her dark apartment. He hoped, with a ferocity that frightened him, that she was asleep. That she was peaceful. That she wasn’t lying awake in the quiet, already regretting her promise.
Saturday felt like a lifetime away. And the game before it was just an obstacle. A ninety-minute performance he had to endure before he could try to make the fantasy in his head—the one that wasn’t just about fucking, but about holding, about waking up to that lavender smell on his own skin—into something real.
The hollow silence pressed down again, heavier now. He turned his face into the pillow. For the first time, the cage didn’t just feel empty. It felt like it was shrinking.