Chapter 1: Midnight Deadline and Stifled Breath
It started two years ago. The toxic relationship with an heirist that changed my life through better or worse. It was usually worse.
The fluorescent light above us had been flickering for the better part of an hour, a steady pulse that matched the headache taking root behind my eyes. Somewhere in the walls, a radiator clanked and groaned, and the study lounge smelled like someone's abandoned instant ramen and the dusty spines of books no one had touched since the Reagan administration.
Bianca Ricci sat across from me, her laptop open, her posture so rigid she might as well have been carved from marble. We'd been assigned to each other three weeks ago, and in that time she'd spoken to me exactly seven times, four of which were corrections to my methodology. The other three were variations of "no."
I was here because I needed this. A year of Jordan's voice in my head telling me I wasn't good enough, wasn't ambitious enough, wasn't enough period. When the research project posting went up, I'd signed up without telling her. A small rebellion, tucked into a corner of my life she didn't know about.
The desk was cluttered with printouts and annotated citations, a stack of library books threatening to avalanche at the slightest vibration. I'd left my own notes at my dorm, so I needed to use her laptop to cross-reference a source. Her laptop, which sat at the very edge of her territory like a border wall.
I pushed back my chair. The legs scraped against the linoleum and she didn't look up.
"Can I see the Ortiz article for a second?" I asked.
Her fingers continued to move across her keyboard. "Download it yourself."
"The library's closed and my card is maxed out."
She sighed, a sound of such profound exhaustion that I almost apologized. Instead, she angled the screen toward me without moving her hands, and I had to lean across the desk to read over her shoulder.
The desk was too narrow. I knew that going in. But I still misjudged the distance, my shoulder pressing into hers as I reached for the touchpad to scroll.
She went still. The kind of still that happens right before someone either swings or runs.
"Jesus," she said, shoving her chair back hard enough to groan against the floor. "Do you have no spatial awareness or are you just trying to crawl into my lap?"
My face burned. "I was just trying to see the screen."
"You could have asked me to send it."
"You said to download it myself."
"God knows you're incapable of simple problem-solving." She swept her hair behind her ear, a gesture that seemed almost violent. "This is what I get for being paired with someone who thinks anthropology is about digging up bones."
"I don't think that."
"Then you're just slow."
The words landed like a slap. Jordan said things like that to me every day, and I'd learned to take them, to nod and shrink and apologize. But hearing it from Bianca, from someone who didn't know me, who'd decided I was worthless based on a three-week partnership, something in my chest tightened.
"You don't know me," I said quietly.
She blinked. For a second, something flickered across her face, too fast to name. Then she crossed her arms.
"I know enough."
We stared at each other across the cluttered desk. The radiator clanked again. The fluorescent light above us flickered, died, then buzzed back to life with a sound like a trapped fly.
And I noticed something I hadn't before. The way her hand rested on the edge of her keyboard, fingers spread wide. The way her chest rose and fell slightly too fast for someone who was supposed to be calm. The way she'd pulled back from that accidental touch like it had burned her.
"You're shaking," I said.
She looked down at her hand. Then she looked at me, and for just a moment, the mask cracked. Something raw and terrified lived behind her eyes, something that had nothing to do with dead-end research projects or miscalculated citations.
Then it was gone. She grabbed her mug, took a sip of coffee that had to be stone cold, and fixed me with a glare that could have curdled milk.
"Don't flatter yourself. I'm cold."
It was sixty-eight degrees in here. I'd checked the thermostat on the way in because the number of students stuffed into this lounge made the place feel like a sauna.
But I didn't push it. I pulled my own chair back to my side of the desk and sat down, the separation between us restored. She returned to her work. I returned to mine. But something had shifted in the small space between us, some new static that hadn't been there before.
For the next hour, we worked in silence. She took notes. I highlighted sources. We moved around each other with the careful choreography of two people who'd been startled by their own proximity and wanted to pretend it hadn't happened.
At one point, I reached for the same pen she'd left in the center of the desk. Our fingers brushed. She yanked her hand back like I'd produced a knife.
"Sorry," I said.
She didn't respond. Her jaw was tight, her focus fixed on her screen. But I saw her fingers hover over the keyboard, trembling slightly, before she forced them still.
I thought about Jordan, about the way she'd looked at me last week when I'd told her I'd signed up for this project. Her mouth had twisted into that familiar shape, halfway between disappointment and contempt.
"You're not cut out for that kind of work," she'd said. "You'll just embarrass yourself."
And I'd believed her. I'd spent two years believing her.
Looking at Bianca across the desk, her focus sharp, her standards unforgiving, I realized I didn't believe Jordan anymore. I didn't know if that was a good thing or not.
"Can I ask you something?" I said.
Bianca's hands stilled. She didn't look up.
"You're going to regardless," she said.
"Why did you sign up for this project?"
Silence. The radiator clanked. The light above us flickered.
"I didn't," she said finally. "I was assigned."
"Then why'd you stay? You could've switched partners."
She finally looked at me. Her dark eyes searched my face for something, I didn't know what. Then she shrugged, a small movement that seemed to cost her something.
"Because you showed up," she said.
And then she went back to her notes, leaving me to sit with that strange, swallowed admission. The weight of it pressed against the stillness of the room, and I had the uneasy feeling that whatever I was becoming tangled in involved no net and no way of telling how far the fall went until I was already in it.
The weeks that followed blurred into a rhythm I couldn't shake. We met three nights a week, sometimes four, always in that same cramped study lounge, always at the same cluttered desk. The project was due in six weeks and we'd barely scratched the surface of the research, but somehow the hours stretched longer and longer until closing time became a suggestion we both ignored.
The more I talked to her, the more she hated me. I'd say something about the methodology and she'd sneer. I'd offer an interpretation of a source and she'd dismantle it with surgical precision. And yet, every time I looked up from my notes, I caught her watching me.
Not the way you watch someone you're sizing up as a threat. The way you watch someone when you don't want them to catch you looking. Her dark eyes would slide away the moment I noticed, snapping back to her screen with such theatrical focus that I almost laughed.
"You're staring at me again," I said one night, three weeks in.
"I was reading the light off your screen. It's distracting."
"It's a laptop screen, not a disco ball."
She made a sound like a tire deflating and returned to her notes. But five minutes later, I caught her again. This time she didn't look away. She held my gaze for one long moment, something flickering behind her eyes, before she broke it with visible effort and pushed her chair back.
"Stretch break," she announced. "I'm going to find a source up in anthropology."
She didn't invite me. But she didn't tell me to stay either, so I followed.
The anthropology stacks were tucked in the back corner of the third floor, a forgotten maze of shelves that hadn't been reorganized since before the internet. The lights were motion-activated and they clicked on in sections as we walked, then darkened behind us like a wave closing over our footprints.
Bianca walked ahead of me, her heels clicking soft on the worn carpet. She hadn't worn the black turtleneck tonight, but the beige skirt was the same, and her hair was tucked behind one ear. In the dim light of the stacks, she looked less like a fortress and more like someone who'd forgotten to keep her walls up.
"Section M," she said, finding the row. She ran her finger along the spines, walking deeper into the narrow aisle between shelves. "We need the 1998 edition of... here."
She stopped abruptly. I'd been looking at a shelf on the opposite side and I didn't see her stop. My chest bumped against her back, the full length of my body pressing into hers for half a heartbeat before I could step away.
The air went very still.
She didn't move. She just stood there, her back against my front, and I could feel the rapid flutter of her breath through the wool of her skirt against my hip. My hands were still raised from trying to catch my balance. One of them hovered near her shoulder. The other had brushed her hip.
Then she turned. And in the narrow space between two shelves, our bodies were close. Too close. The distance between us was measured in inches, and the fluorescent light above us cast shadows across her face.
"I didn't know you were behind me," she said. Her voice came out breathless.
"I told you I was following you."
"You didn't."
"I didn't," I agreed. "But you knew I was there."
Her jaw tightened. She didn't deny it. And in that moment, I felt it. The unmistakable pressure of her thigh against mine, and lower, the heat of her body through the fabric of her skirt pressing against the front of my jeans. She felt it too. I could tell by the way her breath caught, by the way her hand flew to my chest like she meant to push me away and instead found herself gripping the cotton of my hoodie.
Her eyes went wide. Something shattered behind them. Then she shoved me, hard, and I stumbled back into the shelf behind me, sending a cascade of books sliding off the edge.
"This is why you're useless," she snapped, her voice shaking. "You can't even walk through a library without molesting someone."
"I didn't molest you. I bumped into you."
"Jesus." She turned away, her hands trembling at her sides. "Just forget it. Grab the fucking book and let's go."
I grabbed the book. We walked back to the lounge in silence. She didn't look at me once, and I noticed that her hands never stopped shaking until she was seated at her desk with her laptop open between us.
The next day, it happened again. We were at the desk, the air thick with frustration. I'd made a mistake on the citation format, a small thing, a formatting error that would take thirty seconds to fix. But Bianca had seized on it like a lifeline.
"I told you," she hissed, her voice low and cutting, "APA seventh edition. Not sixth. How many times do I have to explain this to you?"
"Sorry," I said. "I'll fix it."
"Sorry. That's all you ever say. Sorry, I'll fix it, sorry, I didn't know better. God." She slammed her hands flat on the desk, the sound echoing in the empty lounge. "Do you have any idea what it's like to work with someone who can't even—"
She stopped. Her gaze dropped. And I followed it.
I was sitting, slouched, and the way I'd shifted in my chair had done nothing to accommodate the situation that had been building in my jeans. She could see it. The shape of me, hard and heavy, pressing against the fabric of my jeans in an unmistakable way.
Her breath caught. Her hands were still flat on the desk. And instead of looking away, she didn't.
"That's gross," she said, but her voice had lost its edge. "You're sitting there, working on a paper about indigenous land rights, and you're..."
"It's not like I chose that."
"Oh, so it's an accident?"
The words came out wrong. Flat. Almost disappointed.
"It happens," I said. "You bumped into me yesterday. All day I've been thinking about your back pressed against my chest. The way you felt. So yes, I'm hard, and I'm sorry, but I'm not going to apologize for finding you attractive."
She stared at me. Then she moved.
She came around the desk in three quick strides, grabbed the waistband of my jeans, and yanked them down to my thighs. Her fingers wrapped around me, hot and urgent, and squeezed.
I went still. The world went very quiet.
"What are you doing?" I asked.
"Shut up."
"Shut up," she repeated, her voice a fractured whisper. Her fingers tightened around me, and I felt the heat of her palm, the slight callus on her thumb from writing notes. I couldn't move. I didn't want to move.
"You feel like—" she started, then stopped herself, her jaw working. "This is a mistake."
"Then let go."
She didn't. Her grip softened, then tightened again, experimental. Her eyes were fixed on what her hand held, dark and unreadable. The fluorescent light hummed overhead, and somewhere down the hall a door slammed, but we were suspended in our own pocket of time, frozen in the space between wrong and inevitable.
"Tell me to stop," she said.
"You have a boyfriend."
"I know." Her voice cracked on the word. "Tell me to stop."
And I should have. Every rational cell in my body screamed it. Andres, his name was Andres, and he existed somewhere in this university, probably doing something normal and decent while his girlfriend knelt in a study lounge with my cock in her hand. Jordan existed too, her voice a constant whisper in my head, telling me I was worthless, that this was all I deserved, that any attention I got was a gift I should be grateful for and never question.
But I was tired of doing what I was told.
"No," I said.
Her breath hitched. "No?"
"I don't want you to stop."
Something broke in her. I watched it happen, watched the last threads of her control snap, and then she was on her knees in front of me, her hands working the zipper of my jeans, shoving them down further, and then her mouth was on me, hot and wet and desperate.
I let my head fall back against the chair. The old wood creaked beneath me. My hands found her hair, tangled in the sharp bob, and she made a sound low in her throat that might have been a whimper or a warning. I didn't care which.
She didn't know what she was doing. That was obvious. Her technique was clumsy, unpracticed, her teeth scraping occasionally, her rhythm erratic. She was learning as she went, and that somehow made it worse, hotter, the knowledge that she was breaking all her own rules for me.
"Fuck," I breathed.
She pulled off, her lips glossy, her eyes wild. "What?"
"Nothing. Please don't stop."
She looked up at me, and for a moment I saw it, the raw fear and desire warring in her eyes. Then she took me back into her mouth, deeper this time, her hand working the base, and I had to grip the arms of the chair to keep from bucking into her throat.
Two years of Jordan telling me I was inadequate. Three weeks of Bianca treating me like I was beneath her. Every insult, every laugh, every cutting remark, and now this, this gorgeous woman on her knees in a cramped study lounge, proving me real. Proving I mattered.
I was going to come. I could feel it building, the pressure coiling tight in my gut.
"I'm close," I said, my voice strained.
She didn't pull away. She worked faster, her fingers firm, her eyes squeezed shut like she was trying to block out what she was doing. But she didn't stop. She kept going until I came with a harsh, broken sound, my hand fisted in her hair, my body shuddering through it.
She pulled off, coughing, wiping her mouth with the back of her hand. Her eyes were red-rimmed. She stood, straightened her skirt, smoothed her hair. And when she looked at me, the mask was back in place, cold and unyielding.
"Clean yourself up," she said. "And don't ever speak of this."
I didn't move. I sat there, exposed, my jeans around my thighs, and watched her walk back to her side of the desk and sit down like nothing had happened. She opened her laptop, her fingers moving over the keyboard with renewed focus, and I realized she was going to pretend it away.
"Bianca."
"Don't." Her voice was sharp, cutting. "Don't say my name like you know me. You don't. You know nothing about me, and I know nothing about you. We're partners on a research project. That's all."
"That's not all."
She looked up, and for a moment, the mask slipped. I saw the terror behind it, the panic of a girl who'd just done something unforgivable and didn't know how to take it back.
"That's all," she repeated, quieter this time. "It has to be, now shut the fuck up and get to work."
The paper got finished. A-minus, the professor noted it was "commendable work." Bianca didn't even look at me when we got the grade back. She just nodded and walked away, her heels clicking against the floor like a countdown to something.
But she didn't vanish. That was the thing. I thought once the project ended, we'd go back to being strangers, two people who shared a library and a secret that would haunt me every time I tried to sleep. Instead, she found ways to appear. A coffee order handed to me at the campus café, the barista shrugging when I asked who paid. A line in the lunch queue, two people ahead, her back straight as a flagpole, never turning around.
And then Jordan started commenting on my mood. "You're distracted," she'd say, her voice flat and judgmental. "You're not present. This is why I worry about you." Because that's what she called it, worry. Every moment of independence I tried to claim, she wrapped in the language of concern until I felt guilty for breathing without her permission.
Three months after the study lounge, Jordan told me she was going to visit her sister for the weekend. Andres, Bianca had mentioned offhandedly once, was going to a conference in Chicago for his father's business. Both of them gone, she'd said with the same voice she used to discuss the weather, but I caught the way her eyes lingered on me for a beat too long.
That Friday night, my phone buzzed at 9:47 PM.
I need help. Organizing sources. Now.
The address was a campus apartment complex, the expensive kind with a gym and a security key fob and murals in the lobby. I stood at her door for a solid minute before I knocked. When she opened it, she was in a silk robe, the kind of deep red that looked like wine, and her hair was wet, still dripping from a shower.
"Took you long enough," she said, and stepped aside to let me in.
Her apartment was clean. Spotless. A penthouse in miniature, all white furniture and gold accents and a view over the campus quad. She had a bookshelf filled with leather-bound classics and a kitchen with appliances that had probably never been used. It smelled like expensive soap and something floral I couldn't name.
"I don't have any sources that need organizing," I said.
She closed the door. The lock clicked with a sound that felt final.
"I know."
She crossed the room and stood in front of me. Her bare feet, the red polish on her toenails, the silk of her robe catching the dim lamplight. She looked at me like she was trying to remember why she was supposed to hate me.
"My boyfriend is in Chicago," she said. "Your girlfriend's out of town."
The silence stretched. I could hear the hum of the refrigerator in the kitchenette, the distant noise of traffic from the street below.
"And here we are," she continued. "Alone."
"Seems like it."
She tilted her head. A droplet of water slid down her neck and disappeared into the collar of her robe.
"This is the last time," she said. "After tonight, we don't do this again. I was weak before. A lapse in judgment. This is just me saying goodbye to a mistake."
"Okay."
"Do you understand me? This doesn't mean anything. You're not special. You're just here."
I didn't respond. She stepped closer, close enough that I could feel the heat radiating off her, the dampness of her hair brushing against my jaw.
"You should be grateful," she whispered. "That I'm even acknowledging you exist."
I wanted to say something, to push back, to point out that she was the one who texted me, that she was the one in a robe, that she was the one who'd gone to her knees in that study lounge with nothing but a ceiling light and four walls to witness. But she kissed me before I could form the words.
Her kiss was desperate, hungry, like she'd spent the last three months starving. She bit my lower lip, hard, and when I made a sound she swallowed it, her hands fisting in my shirt, pulling me toward her.
"Filthy," she said against my mouth. "You're filthy, you know that?"
"Then why'd you call me?"
She didn't answer. She pulled back just enough to yank her robe open. Nothing underneath. Nothing at all. She'd come to the door with nothing underneath.
"Because I have needs," she said, the excuse thin and broken. "And you're available."
I looked at her. Olive skin, sharp collarbone, her breasts small and tight, her nipples dark and hard from the cool air. Between her legs, a patch of dark hair. She watched me watch her, and I saw the tiny tremor at the corner of her mouth, the uncertainty she'd never admit to.
"Don't just stare," she snapped. "I didn't ask you here to gawk."
I grabbed her hips and turned her around. She gasped, her hands bracing against the back of her white sofa as I bent her over it. The robe pooled around her waist. She was already wet, slick enough that I could see the shine of it against her thighs.
"Disgusting," she breathed. "You're fucking disgusting. Coming into my home, treating me like this."
She said that while I was unbuckling my jeans. She said it while I pushed them down, while I kicked them off, while I settled behind her. She said it right before I gripped her hips and drove into her in one deep, brutal stroke.
Her whole body seized. Her head went back, her mouth open, a sound caught between a whimper and a growl. Her inner walls clenched around me so tight I almost lost it right there.
"There," I said, my voice rough.
"Shut up, shut up, shut up—"
I moved. Slow at first, dragging myself out until only the tip remained, then slamming back in hard enough that she slid forward against the couch. Her knuckles went white where she gripped the cushions. Her back arched beautifully, pointing her ass up at me, taking me deeper.
"You're pathetic," she said, her voice strained. "You think this means something? You're just a body. Just a warm body and I'm using you."
"Okay," I said, and thrust harder.
She cried out. A real sound this time, torn from her throat, and she tried to suppress it by biting her wrist.
"You call me names Bianca," I said, driving in to the hilt, feeling the base of my cock press against her, "but you're the one spreading your legs."
"I'm not—" Her voice broke as I hit something inside her that made her whole body convulse. "I'm not spreading—"
"You are. You're desperate, Bianca."
"I'm not desperate. You're convenient. You're casual. You're the closest warm thing in walking distance."
She said it while I was buried deep inside her, my hips flush against her ass, and her body was trembling like she was about to come apart at the seams.
"You hate me," I said.
"I do."
"You hate everything about me."
"Everything fucking thing."
"Then why do you feel so good around my cock?"
She made a sound like a sob. Her head dropped, her forehead pressing into the cushion. I could feel her walls clenching around me, rhythmically, involuntarily, betrayal in the language of her own flesh.
"Because you're wrong," she whispered. “I fucking hate you.”
Something inside me switched and made me feel sympathetic towards the situation. It felt wrong to have her bent over me, to be cheating on my girlfriend, to go against any moral code that was in me. I felt sorry.
“I’m sorry you hate me, Bianca,” I said as I thrusted harder.
The words came out like a confession, like an apology I didn't know I owed her. My hips kept moving, kept driving into her, but something had changed in the quality of the motion. Less punishment, more plea.
Bianca didn't respond. She stayed bent over the couch, her face hidden, her body taking each thrust with a small, choked sound. Her walls were still tight around me, still gripping like she was afraid I'd leave, but the rhythm had shifted into something slower, deeper. I could feel the change in her too, the way her spine softened, the way her hands uncurled from the cushions.
I wanted to apologize for what ever I did to make her hate me. I kept thrusting harder. Each slap that echoed in her apartment an apology.
I could feel her tensing up under me as if she was about to come, but I could tell she already did. I was not done apologizing.
She was trembling beneath me, her entire body quivering with the aftershocks of whatever had just broken loose inside her. I could feel it, the way her thighs shook against mine, the way her breath came in short, uneven gasps. But I wasn't done. I kept my pace steady, kept driving into her, each thrust a word I couldn't say out loud.
"I'm sorry," I said, the rhythm of my hips matching the confession. "I'm sorry for whatever I did to make you hate me."
She made a sound, something small and broken, half muffled by the cushion.
"Stop saying that you f-fucker," she whispered.
"Why?"
"Because you don't mean it." Her voice cracked. "You don't know what you're apologizing for."
I slowed. Not stopped, but slowed, my hands sliding from her hips to her waist, pulling her upright against my chest. She went rigid, but didn't pull away. Her back pressed against my front, her head falling back against my shoulder, and I could feel her heart hammering against my ribs.
"Then tell me," I said, my mouth against her ear. "Tell me what you want me to apologize for."
She was quiet for a long moment. I stayed inside her, still and patient, feeling her body adjust, feeling the heat of her surrounding me.
“I don’t know what I did, but I’m sorry,” I said as the rhythm of my hips started moving again. An audible gasp escaped her mouth. I didn’t feel like I was close to climax. My brain was telling to feel bad about something and my cock was at attention. Both did not make me feel the pleasure of climax near by. If anything my brain was telling my body to suppress it.
She didn't answer. She stayed pressed against me, her breath coming in shallow gasps, her body trembling with each slow thrust. I kept the rhythm gentle, almost tender, my mouth against her ear, my hands on her hips.
"I'm sorry," I said again, quieter this time. "I'm sorry you feel like you have to hate me. I'm sorry you think I'm something you have to push away."
"Stop," she breathed. "Please just—"
Her voice broke. Her hands found mine where they rested on her hips, and instead of pushing them away, her fingers laced through them, gripping tight.
I kept moving. Slow and deep. The kind of pace that said I wasn't in a hurry. The kind that said she wasn't just a body I was trying to finish inside. The kind that made her breath catch every time I bottomed out.
"I'm sorry you think I'm worthless," I said. "I'm sorry you think I'm only good for sneaking around and pretending nothing happened."
Her grip on my hands tightened. Her head fell forward, and I felt a shudder run through her whole body.
"You don't know what I think," she whispered.
"Then tell me."
She was quiet. The only sounds were our breathing and the soft wet rhythm of my cock moving inside her. I could feel her clenching around me again, that telltale flutter that meant she was close, but I didn't speed up. I held the same pace, let her ride the edge.
"Do you want me to stop?" I asked.
She shook her head. A small, desperate movement.
"I don't want to want this," she said, her voice barely audible. "I don't want to want you. You're not supposed to be anything to me. You're just supposed to be some guy in my anthropology class who can't even format a citation correctly."
I almost laughed. "You remember that?"
"I remember everything about you." Her voice cracked on the admission. "I fucking hate that I do, but I do."
We moved together in the quiet for a moment. She shifted, turning her head slightly, and I could see the edge of her profile, the curve of her jaw, the way her lashes were wet.
"I'm sorry," I said.
"Stop apologizing."
"I'm not sorry for this though," I said. "I'm sorry about whatever you're carrying around. The weight you're dragging. But I'm not sorry you're here. I'm not sorry you called me."
She let out a sound that was half laugh, half sob. "You're an fucking idiot."
"Yeah. Jordan tells me that all the time."
Her body stiffened at the mention of Jordan's name. She pulled one of her hands free from mine, braced herself against the back of the couch, and looked over her shoulder at me. Her dark eyes were glassy, her mouth swollen.
"Don't talk about her," she said. "Not right now. Don't make this about your girlfriend."
"You're the one who brought up my girlfriend earlier."
"Because she's gone and you're here and that makes this okay." Her voice was sharp, defensive. "That's the only way I can do this."
I understood. I understood more than she probably wanted me to. The ability to tell herself that this was just something to fill a void, not a betrayal of anything real.
“I’m sorry,” I said as I pushed her down again wanting to show her how sorry I was. “I didn’t mean to bring her up.”
The moment I pushed her down, the apology in my hands, in my hips, I felt her submit. Not the kind of submission that comes from surrender, but the kind that comes from exhaustion. She'd been fighting me for weeks, months really, and something in her spine gave way. She settled against the couch, her cheek pressed against the white fabric, her arms folding beneath her like a pillow.
I kept the pace slow, almost deliberate. Each thrust pressed the apology deeper into her body. I could feel her breathing change, the tension draining from her shoulders, her legs, the set of her jaw. She made a sound, low and long, not a whimper but something closer to release.
I leaned over her, my chest against her back, my mouth at her ear. The angle shifted, pushed deeper, and she gasped, her hands flattening against the cushion like she needed to anchor herself to something solid.
"I'm sorry I don't know how to be what you need," I said. "I'm sorry I'm just some guy who bumped into you in a library."
As she was about to say something I pulled myself up straight and started thrusting harder. Faster.
She gasped, her fingers clawing at the cushion. "Fuck, you're—"
"I'm what?"
She didn't answer. Couldn't answer. I could feel her tightening around me, that familiar flutter building, her whole body coiling like a spring. I kept the pace brutal, relentless, my hands gripping her hips hard enough to leave marks she'd have to explain tomorrow.
"Tell me," I said, my voice ragged. "Tell me what I am."
"A mistake," she breathed. "A fucking mistake I keep making."
"Then why do you keep making it?"
She didn't answer. She just pushed back against me, meeting my thrusts, her body betraying every word she'd ever said about me. I could feel her coming undone, the tremors starting in her thighs, spreading up through her stomach, her chest.
"Look at me," I said.
"No."
I stopped. I could feel myself buried deep in side of her. I could also see her back arching for her breathing.
I turned her around and lifted her off the couch in one motion. She let out a startled gasp, her legs instinctively wrapping around my waist even as her hands came up to push at my chest. But I didn't let go. I carried her to the middle of the floor, where the cold hardwood met the edge of her rug, and I lowered her down.
The chill hit her bare skin and she hissed, her body arching off the floor for a moment before the cold settled into her sweaty back. Her dark hair fanned out around her head, damp strands sticking to her temples, her throat, her collarbones. She stared up at me, wide-eyed and breathless, and for once she didn't have a sharp word ready.
I settled between her legs, my knees finding purchase on either side of her hips. The floor was hard beneath me, the cold seeping into my skin, but I didn't give a shit. I wanted to see her eyes. I needed to look at her while I did this. Her chest was rising and falling quickly.
She tried to look away, but I caught her chin with my hand, gentle but firm, turning her face back to mine.
"Look at me," I said again.
She swallowed. Her dark eyes met mine, and I saw the fear there, the confusion, the desperate want she'd been drowning in for months.
I pushed inside her. Slow. One inch at a time. Her breath caught, her hands coming up to grip my forearms, her nails digging in.
"I'm sorry," I said, the words spilling out as I thrust deeper. "I'm sorry, Bianca."
"Stop—"
"I'm sorry I make you feel like you have to hate me. I'm sorry you think I'm some mistake you keep making. I'm sorry you can't look at me without wanting to run."
I moved inside her with a rhythm born of desperation, each thrust carrying the weight of the word I kept repeating. Her eyes were locked on mine, and I could see her walls crumbling in real time.
"I'm sorry you think I'm worthless," I continued. "I'm sorry you think you have to throw me away to keep yourself whole."
A sound broke from her throat. Something between a sob and a moan. Her hips rose to meet mine, her body betraying her again.
"I'm sorry you got assigned to me. I'm sorry I bumped into you in the library. I'm sorry I made you kneel in that study lounge and taste me. I'm not sorry you did, but I'm sorry you feel like it's a sin."
Her hands moved from my forearms to my face, cupping my jaw, her thumbs brushing the corners of my mouth. Her eyes were wet, and I watched a tear slip down her temple into her hair.
"I'm sorry you think you can't have me," I said, thrusting harder, deeper. "I'm sorry you think wanting me is weak."
She pulled my face down and kissed me. Not desperate, not hungry like before. Something softer. Bruised. A surrender dressed as an assault.
We moved together on that cold floor, and the apologies kept coming, each one a promise pressed into her body. I lost track of time. The lamp on her side table cast a dim golden glow, and outside the window, the campus lights flickered in the dark.
She came first. I felt it ripple through her, her whole body tensing, her nails raking down my back, her mouth open against my shoulder as she gasped my name and then tried to swallow it back. I kept going, kept moving through her aftershocks, and she pushed at my chest, trying to get me to stop, but her legs stayed wrapped around my waist.
"Too much," she breathed. "Please, I can't—"
I slowed, let her catch her breath, let her body settle against the cold floor. Then I started again, gentler this time, and she groaned even as her hips tilted to take me deeper.
The second time, she turned me around. She straddled me on the floor, her thighs gripping my hips, her hands flat on my chest. She looked down at me with that cold, unyielding stare, and I could see her trying to summon back the armor. But I was inside her, and she couldn't hold it together long enough to put the walls back up.
"I hate fucking you," she said, her voice raw.
"I know."
"I really fucking hate you."
She started moving, slow and deliberate, and I let her take whatever she needed. She rode me until the tears came again, silent and steady, and I didn't say a word. I just held her hips and let her use me the way she clearly needed to.
The third time, we were both shaking. She was on her hands and knees, the floor cold against her palms, and I was behind her, my chest pressed to her back, my mouth at her ear. I whispered the same words over and over, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, until they lost meaning and became something else entirely, a mantra, a prayer, a claim.
By the fourth hour, we were a mess of sweat and spent breath and skin sticking to skin. I collapsed onto my back, my arm thrown over my eyes, my chest heaving. She fell beside me, her head turning to face me, her breath coming in shallow gasps.
The room was quiet. The only light came from the lamp and the pale glow of early dawn creeping through the blinds.
"Four hours," she said finally, her voice hoarse. "I'm going to regret this in the morning."
"I’m sorry."
She was quiet for a long moment. Then I felt her hand find mine on the cold floor, her fingers lacing through them, tentative, almost shy.
"I'm not sorry," she said, barely above a whisper. "I'm not sorry I called you. I'm not sorry you came."
I turned my head to look at her. Her eyes were closed, her face slack, her defenses finally down.
"Thank you," I said.
She squeezed my hand. And for a few precious minutes, we lay there on the cold floor, two people who had crossed every line they'd drawn for themselves, holding on to each other.
That was two years ago. And for two years, we kept doing it.
It started slow. A week after that first night, she texted me at 2 AM. “I can't sleep.” And I knew what that meant. I went to her apartment and she was waiting at the door in that same red robe or sometimes a blue one, and she pulled me inside without a word.
That became the pattern. The late nights turned into early mornings. I'd slip out of her building before the sun was fully up, my shirt untucked, my hair a mess, and I'd walk back to my dorm with her taste still on my tongue and her voice still in my ears, telling me how much she hated me while her legs wrapped tighter around my waist.
The university closed her study lounge for renovations three months in. We didn't lose our rhythm. We just found new places.
The janitorial closet in the humanities building was the first. I'd text her when I was heading over to study, and sometimes she'd be there, waiting in the dark, her back against the shelves of cleaning supplies. She'd grab me by the belt and pull me into the narrow space, her lips already on mine before the door clicked shut. The chemical smell of bleach and floor wax clung to her hair afterward, and I'd catch her scent in my nose for the rest of the day.
"You're late," she'd hiss, even when I wasn't. Even when I was exactly on time.
And then she'd sink to her knees, and the anger in her voice would become something else entirely.
The janitorial closet became a ritual. Twice a week, sometimes three. She'd text me a string of numbers, the code to the closet lock, and I'd find her there, always already waiting, always already annoyed. She never kissed me first. She'd grab the front of my jeans and tell me to hurry up, that she had a seminar in twenty minutes, and then she'd take me in her mouth with an urgency that contradicted every word she'd ever said about me.
The men's restroom in the library was another one. The one on the third floor, the corner one nobody used because the lock was broken. She'd come in after me, check the stalls, then pull me into the disabled stall and brace her hands on the grab bars while I took her from behind. The acoustics in that tiled room made every sound she tried to swallow far too loud, and she'd clamp her hand over her mouth and glare at me as if that was somehow my fault.
"Somebody's going to hear us," I said once.
"Then shut me the fuck up."
So I did. I turned her around and kissed her, swallowing her moans, my hand fisted in her hair, my other hand gripping her thigh as I drove into her hard enough to make the stall rattle.
She came into my mouth that time, and the way she cursed me afterward, breathless and shaking, was worth every risk.
When fall semester rolled around, we didn't have any classes together. I'd gotten into a higher program, she had her own schedule, and we should have drifted apart. But she didn't let that happen. She'd text me from her lectures, just a time and a place, and I'd cut class to meet her in the parking garage, in her car, in the middle of the afternoon.
Her car was a black BMW with cream leather seats. She'd keep the engine running, the air conditioning on, and she'd recline the passenger seat and climb over to straddle me in the driver's seat. The windows were tinted, but the campus security patrol drove by every hour, and that made it better. The risk made her braver. She'd ride me with her teeth in her bottom lip, her eyes closed, her hair ticking across my face.
"I'm supposed to be in a stats lecture," she'd say, her hips rocking against mine.
"Then go."
"Shut the fuck up. I'm busy."
And she'd pull me deeper, grinding until neither of us could speak.
The public persona became a performance. I'd see her in the dining hall, surrounded by her friends, her laugh sharp and dismissive. She'd catch my eye across the room and her expression would curdle, her mouth twisting into a sneer.
"Oh, that guy," I heard her say once to a friend. "Partnered with him for a research project freshman year. Total disaster. Couldn't even format a bibliography."
Her friend laughed. I looked down at my tray and kept walking.
I understood. I knew the rules. In public, she treated me like a stain on her shoe. It hurt, every time, but it also made the private moments sweeter. When we were alone, when the doors were locked and the world was far away, she dropped the act. Her fingers would find mine in the dark, tentative and searching. She'd whisper things she'd never say with anyone else watching.
"Don't look at me in the hallway tomorrow," she'd say, her head on my chest, her breath warm against my skin. "Don't even glance in my direction."
"Okay."
"If someone asks, we're strangers. We've barely spoken. You're nothing to me."
"Okay."
"And don't you dare look at me, Daniel. I mean it."
But she'd press closer, her arm draping across my stomach, her fingers curling into the fabric of my shirt. And in the quiet of her apartment, with the city lights bleeding through the blinds, she held me like I was the only thing keeping her tethered to the earth.
The last encounter was a week before the end of spring semester. She texted me at 11 PM, a single address. A hotel, three blocks off campus. I went because I always went. Because she asked and I couldn't say no to her, no matter how many times she called me worthless in public. I felt indebted to her.
She was waiting in the room when I arrived. The lights were off. She was standing by the window, the city glow outlining her silhouette through a thin white slip.
"I got a room," she said, her voice strange. Hollow.
"Okay."
"My parents think I'm at a conference. Andres thinks I'm visiting my aunt." She turned to face me. "I spent two weeks finding a hotel that wouldn't ask questions."
"That's a lot of effort."
She didn't respond. She crossed the room, her bare feet silent on the carpet. When she reached me, she didn't kiss me. She pressed her forehead to my chest and stood there, shaking.
"I know I'm unlovable," she whispered. "I know I'm cold and cruel and I say terrible things to you in front of other people. I know I'm a liar and a cheat and I'm using you."
I opened my mouth to respond, but she cut me off.
"But you're the only one who's ever looked at me like I'm not a mistake," she said, her voice cracking. "The only one who's ever apologized to me while I'm taking you inside me. The only one who's ever made me feel like I'm worth anything at all."
She looked up at me. Tears streaked her face, and for once she didn't try to hide them.
"I'm sorry," she said. "For everything. For all of it."
And then she crossed her arms over her chest and looked away, bracing for me to walk out.
I didn't walk out. I pulled her to me, and for the first time in two years, I kissed her without a plan, without a clock ticking, without the world pressing in on all sides. I kissed her until her shoulders relaxed, until her arms came up around my neck, until she murmured something that sounded like my name.