The floorboards are cool under my bare feet as I cross the living room, the skirt whispering against my thighs with every step. I don't look back at the bedroom. I don't want to see the shape of Ethan's arm reaching for empty space, the way it's reached for me a thousand times without ever really touching.

My phone buzzes again in the tiny pocket. Derek's name. I don't need to open it. I already know what it says—the same thing it said the first time, the same thing it will always say.

Now.

The lock clicks behind me and the hallway swallows me whole. I'm in the stairwell before I realize I've been holding my breath, my fingers trailing along the cold railing as I descend. The building is quiet at this hour, just the hum of the fluorescent lights and the distant sound of a TV through someone's door.

I push through the front entrance and the night air hits me—cool, sharp, carrying the smell of asphalt and exhaust and something greener, something alive. The street is empty except for a parked car and a cat slipping under a fence. The garage on the corner of Meridian glows faintly, a single bulb burning over the bay door.

He's not leaning against the doorway anymore.

I cross the street anyway. My feet know the way by now, the cracked sidewalk, the gravel lot, the oil-stained concrete. The bay door is up just a few feet, a strip of yellow light spilling onto the ground like a tongue.

I duck under it.

Inside, the garage is all shadow and metal, the smell of grease and gasoline thick enough to taste. Tools hang on pegboards. A car sits on the lift, its underbelly exposed like a patient on a table. And there, in the back, leaning against the storage room door with his arms crossed and his blue eyes catching the light, is Derek.

"You took your time."

"You said now." I stop a few feet from him, the concrete cold under my soles. "I came the second you said."

He pushes off the door. Closes the distance between us in two lazy strides, his boots scuffing the floor. His hand comes up, knuckles brushing my jaw, tilting my face toward the light. He looks at me like I'm something he's been waiting to unwrap.

"No panties," he says, and it's not a question.

I shake my head. The skirt is so thin I can feel the air moving between my legs.

"Good girl." His thumb drags across my lower lip, and my mouth opens without me telling it to. He presses in, just past my teeth, and I taste the salt of his skin, the faint tang of motor oil that never quite washes off. "You brought your keys?"

I blink. "What?"

"Your apartment keys. You left with the door unlocked."

I feel the flush crawl up my neck. I didn't even think. I was so focused on getting out, on getting here, that I left the door to my own home standing open.

"Ethan will figure it out," he says, reading my face. "He'll wake up, find the door open, find you gone. He'll call you."

I pull my phone from the pocket. No missed calls yet. But it's coming. I can feel it, the way you can feel a storm before it breaks.

"Turn it off," Derek says.

My thumb hovers over the power button. "If I turn it off—"

"If you turn it off, you're here. Fully. No one pulling at the edge of your attention." He steps closer, his chest brushing mine, his breath warm on my forehead. "Or you can go back. Fix the door. Tuck yourself into bed like a good little girlfriend."

The word girlfriend lands like a slap. Like a brand.

I press the power button. The screen goes black. I hold it out to him, and he takes it, sliding it into his back pocket.

"There," he says, low and satisfied. "Now you're mine for real."

He backs me up until my shoulders hit the storage room door, his hands finding my hips under the skirt, his thumbs pressing into the soft skin above my hipbones. The bruise from the bus is still there, faded yellow-green, and he finds it without looking, traces it like a map.

"You wore this for me."

"I wore it for you."

"And nothing else."

"Nothing else."

His mouth drops to my throat, and I tip my head back, letting him take what he wants. His teeth graze my pulse, not hard enough to hurt, just enough to remind me whose hands I'm in. My fingers find his shirt, bunch the fabric, pull him closer.

"You're shaking," he murmurs against my skin.

"I'm not."

He laughs, a low rumble that I feel in my chest. "You are. You're trembling like a leaf in a storm, and you haven't even seen what I've got planned for you yet."

His hand slides between my thighs, and I gasp, my knees buckling. He catches me, his arm around my waist, his fingers pressing against the damp heat of me through the thin cotton.

"Soaked," he says, like he's savoring the word. "Already soaked, and I haven't even touched you."

"You are touching me."

"Not the way I'm going to."

He pushes the skirt up, baring me to the cold air, and I feel his eyes on me like a physical thing. The way he looks at me—like I'm the only thing in the world worth looking at—makes my heart slam against my ribs.

"You're going to come on my fingers first," he says, and it's not a suggestion. "Then you're going to beg me to fuck you."

I open my mouth to argue, to tell him I don't beg, but his fingers slide inside me and all the words turn to air. He curls them, finds the spot that makes my vision blur, and I grab his shoulders to keep from falling.

"That's it," he says, working me slow, deliberate, his thumb circling my clit. "Let go. I've got you."

And I do. I let go of everything—the apartment, the open door, the phone in his pocket, the boyfriend at home who will wake up to an empty bed and a door that doesn't lock. I let go of the guilt and the fear and the part of me that still thinks I should be ashamed.

I come apart on his fingers, my cry swallowed by his mouth as he kisses me through it, and when I finally open my eyes, he's smiling.

"Good," he says, pulling his hand back, slick with me. "Now say my name."

"Derek."

"Louder."

"Derek."

He spins me around, pressing me against the storage room door, my palms flat on the cold metal. I feel his chest against my back, his mouth at my ear, his cock hard against the cleft of my ass.

"Now," he says, his voice rough. "Tell me you're mine."

And I do. I say the words into the dark of the garage, where no one can hear them but him, and the door of the storage room swings open behind me, swallowing us both into the dark.

The door swings shut behind us and the dark swallows everything—the garage, the light, the world. Just the smell of him now, grease and sweat and that other thing I've never been able to name, the thing that lives in my nose like a home I didn't know I had.

"Knees."

His voice comes from everywhere and nowhere. I can't see him, can't see my own hand in front of my face, and the concrete is cold and rough against my shins as I lower myself. The sound of my knees hitting the floor is loud in the blackness.

I hear him move. The whisper of fabric, the jingle of a belt buckle. My eyes are adjusting now, finding the darker shape of him against the dark, and I reach out blindly. My fingers find his thighs first—denim, warm through the cold air—and then the buckle, cool metal under my clumsy hands.

His hand threads into my hair. Pulls my head back. I feel the sting of it, the sweet ache at my scalp, and my mouth falls open on a breath I didn't mean to let out.

"You came for me once already tonight," he says, and his voice is rough, scraped low. "Sneaking out of your own bed, leaving your door wide open, walking across the street in nothing but a skirt and your bare feet." His thumb traces my jaw in the dark. "You've been a very good girl."

The buckle comes undone under my fingers. The button. The zipper. I feel him hard against my knuckles through his boxers, and my mouth waters—actually waters, like a dog at a bowl.

"So I'm going to give you something." His grip tightens in my hair, just enough to make my eyes water. "But first you're going to tell me what you want."

I know the game. I know what he wants to hear. And the crazy thing is—I want to say it. The words are already there, sitting on my tongue like candy, waiting to be offered.

"I want your cock in my mouth," I say, and my voice doesn't even sound like mine. It sounds like someone braver. Someone who doesn't have a boyfriend asleep in an apartment with an unlocked door.

"Louder."

"I want your cock in my mouth, Derek."

He makes a sound low in his throat, half laugh, half growl, and his hand releases my hair. I feel him hook his thumbs into his waistband and push—and then he's there, in front of my face, the heat of him radiating off his skin, and I can smell him, that smell, so close I could drown in it.

I lean forward. My lips brush the head of him, and he's already slick, already leaking, and the taste of him hits my tongue like a struck match—salt and skin and something darker, something I'd crawl through glass to find again.

"That's it," he breathes. "Open up."

I do. I take him into my mouth, slow, letting my tongue trace the vein on the underside, feeling his pulse against my lips. He's thick, and my jaw strains, and the stretch is a burn I want to live inside. His hand finds my hair again, not pulling this time, just resting there, guiding, holding me where he wants me.

"Fuck," he says, the word dragged out of him. "You have no idea how long I've thought about this."

I look up at him—or toward where I know his face is, the dark blur of him above me—and I take him deeper. My nose brushes his belly. I feel him twitch on my tongue, taste the salt of his pre-cum, and I moan around him, a sound that vibrates through his whole body.

His hips move, just a little, just testing. And I let him. I let him fuck my mouth in the dark, slow and shallow at first, then deeper, his grip in my hair tightening, his breath coming faster in the black air between us.

"Look at you," he murmurs, and I can hear the smile in his voice. "On your knees in the dark. Mouth full of me. And your boyfriend's at home, probably rolling over right now, reaching for a warm body that isn't there."

A sound escapes me—half whimper, half something else. I don't pull away. I don't want to.

"He doesn't know what you taste like," Derek says, his thumb stroking my cheekbone. "He doesn't know how you sound when you swallow. He never will."

He pulls out slowly, letting me gasp for air, and I feel his hand under my chin, tilting my face up. In the dark, I can just make out the gleam of his eyes.

"You're mine," he says. "Say it."

"I'm yours."

"Again."

"I'm yours, Derek."

He pulls me to my feet, spins me around, and I feel the cold metal of the door against my cheek, his chest against my back, his cock pressing against the soaked cotton of my skirt. He bunches the fabric in his fist, pushes it up, and I feel the air on my bare skin, the heat of him at my entrance.

"You want this?" he asks, and his voice is strained, like he's holding himself back.

"Yes."

"Say it."

"I want you to fuck me, Derek."

He pushes inside me in one slow, endless motion, and I cry out, my palms flat against the door, my forehead pressed to the cold metal. He fills me completely, and for a moment neither of us moves—just the feel of him buried deep, the pulse of him inside me, the dark wrapping around us like a second skin.

Then the door cracks open.

Light spills across my upturned face, sharp and sudden, and I hear a voice—a familiar voice, calling my name from somewhere outside the garage.

"Maya?"

The name cuts through the dark like a blade of light, and my whole body seizes. Derek freezes behind me, still buried inside me, and I feel the pulse of him, the only anchor in the sudden flood of panic. His hand comes up fast, clamping over my mouth, palm rough with calluses and the faint tang of motor oil that my tongue remembers.

His breath is hot at my ear. "Don't move."

I can't. Even if I wanted to, my legs have turned to water, held up only by the press of his body and the cold door against my front. The storage room is still mostly dark, but the crack in the door has thrown a ribbon of light across the floor—and my bare feet are standing right in it.

"Maya?" Ethan's voice again, closer now. I hear his footsteps on the gravel, the scuff of his sneakers. "Are you in there?"

Tears sting my eyes. Not from fear—from the sheer impossibility of this. I left the door open. I left my phone off. I let Derek take everything from me, and now the life I was supposed to protect is standing forty feet away, calling my name into the dark like he already knows.

I feel Derek's chest press against my back, his lips brushing my ear. "He's at the bay door."

He doesn't sound scared. He sounds… calm. Curious, almost, like a cat watching a bird land just out of reach.

Then his hips shift, and I gasp against his palm.

He's still inside me. He's still inside me, and he just moved—a slow, deliberate grind that made my teeth clench and my cunt clench around him, and I hear him exhale, a quiet sound that could be a laugh or a hiss.

"Shh," he murmurs, and the word is a command, not comfort. "Careful, baby. One sound and he's in here."

My heart is pounding so hard I can feel it in my throat. Ethan's shadow falls across the light spilling through the crack, blocking it, and I watch it move past—toward the office, not the storage room.

Derek moves again, slow, shallow, just the head of him sliding against my inner walls, and I bite down on my lip hard enough to taste copper.

"You like this," he breathes, and it's not a question. "You can't even deny it, can you? Your boyfriend's twenty feet away, and you're dripping around my cock."

I shake my head, a tiny motion against his hand, and it's a lie and the truth all at once. I don't like this. I hate it. I hate that he's right, that the fear and the shame are curdling in my stomach into something hot and wet, something that has nothing to do with Ethan at all.

"He's out there, walking through my garage, looking for you," Derek whispers. "And here you are, full of me, quiet as a grave."

The shadow passes the door of our little room and loops back. I can hear Ethan muttering under his breath—"Where the hell"—and the words blur into the sound of Derek's rough breathing, his bellows pushing against my back.

Then, in the dark, Derek reaches down and finds the door. Slowly—so slowly I can hear the air move against the metal—he pulls it inward. A slice of light widens, and I feel the cold air wash across my bare thighs. Footsteps on concrete. Ethan's voice, muffled now, but calling from somewhere else in the garage.

"She must've forgotten something," he says along, and then his voice fades as he walks toward the entrance.

Derek waits until the footsteps recede completely before he eases the door shut without a sound. The click of the latch falls into the dark like a coin dropping into still water, and the light is gone.

The blackness swallows us whole again, and I realize I've been holding my breath so long my lungs burn.

"You're still mine," Derek says, his hand sliding from my mouth to my throat, pressing just enough to make my pulse quicken. He's still inside me. I can feel him throbbing at my center, hard and desperate, and I know—I know—that he's not done with me yet.

And the last sound I hear, before the garage goes silent, is Ethan's voice, faint and muffled, calling my name from somewhere out in the night.

I feel him before I hear him move — the shift of air, the way his fingers tighten on my hip. Still buried inside me, still throbbing, and my mind is a white noise of Ethan's fading footsteps and the door that's now closed between us.

"He's gone," I whisper, the words barely a breath against his palm.

Derek doesn't pull out. He holds me there, his chest against my back, his mouth at my ear, and I can feel his heartbeat through his shirt — steady, unhurried, like a clock that knows it has all the time in the world.

"Not yet," he says. "He's circling the block. He'll come back."

I want to argue. I want to tell him Ethan isn't like that, that he gives up easily, that he's probably already walking home with his phone in his hand, already forgetting what he was looking for. But the words die in my throat, because I know — I know — that Derek is right. Ethan has never been good at letting go of things once he's decided they matter.

And I left the door open.

"I need to text him," I say, the words coming out rough, scraped. "He's going to call the cops. He's going to—"

Derek's hand slides from my mouth to my throat, not squeezing, just resting there, his thumb against my pulse. "You want to go back to him?"

"No." The word is out before I can think, and I feel him shift behind me, a small sound that could be satisfaction. "But I need him to stop looking. I need him to think I'm safe. I need—"

"You need to give me your phone."

I blink into the dark. "You have my phone."

"I have your phone," he agrees. "But you want to text him. So you're going to ask me."

My breath catches. The power shifts between us, subtle as a change in pressure, and I feel it in the way he holds himself — patient, waiting, giving me the space to make the choice he already knows I'll make.

"Please," I say, and the word tastes like surrender.

His hand leaves my throat. I hear him move, the rustle of fabric, the click of a button. Then the screen of my phone lights up in the dark, a small rectangle of cold blue light that makes me squint. He holds it in front of my face, the keyboard already open, my thumb hovering over the keys.

"Tell him you're at your sister's," Derek says. "Tell him you fell asleep there. Tell him you're fine, and you'll see him tomorrow."

I type the words with shaking fingers, each letter a small betrayal. My sister — the lie I've rehearsed, the alibi I've built. I send it before I can second-guess, before I can think about the way Ethan's face will look when he reads it, the way he'll believe me because he always believes me.

The screen shows delivered. Then, a moment later, the three dots of him typing back.

I hold my breath.

Okay. Love you. Be safe.

The words are so simple, so earnest, that they cut deeper than any accusation could. I stare at them until the screen dims, until Derek takes the phone from my hand and pockets it again, until the dark closes back around us like a curtain.

"He's gone," Derek says, and this time there's no question in it. "He's home. He's in bed. He's not coming back."

I feel his hands on my hips, turning me to face him in the dark. I can't see his eyes, but I can feel the weight of his gaze, the way it pins me in place.

"You did good," he says, and his voice is softer now, almost gentle. "You lied to him, and you did it for me."

"I did it for me." The words come out stronger than I expected. "I did it because I'm here. Because I want to be here."

He's quiet for a moment. Then his hand finds my jaw in the dark, tilting my face up, and I feel his mouth on mine — not demanding, not taking, but something closer to a question. And I answer it with my tongue, with my teeth, with the way I pull him closer and feel him hard against my belly, still ready, still waiting.

"Then take what you want," he says against my lips. "You've earned it."

I push him back until his shoulders hit the wall, until I feel the rough concrete through his shirt, until I'm the one pressing him into the dark. My hands find his belt, his zipper, and I hear him laugh low in his throat as I drop to my knees.

"That's my girl," he says, and the words are a brand, a promise, a door that closes behind me and locks from the inside.

My knees hit the concrete and the cold bites through my skin, but I don't feel it. I feel him—his hands in my hair, his cock heavy on my tongue, the salt of him spreading across my palate like something I've been starving for without knowing it.

He lets me take him slow at first, lets me learn the shape of him with my mouth, the vein that pulses against my lips, the way his breath catches when I swallow him deep. My hands find his thighs, grip the rough denim, and I feel the muscle jump under my fingers as I take him all the way, my nose brushing the coarse hair at his base.

"Fuck," he breathes, and the word is a prayer in the dark. "Look at you. Taking all of me like you were made for it."

I look up at him, at the dark blur of his face above me, and I don't stop. I hollow my cheeks, pull back slow, let the head of him drag against the roof of my mouth, and I hear the sound he makes—low and rough and desperate in a way I've never heard from him before. It makes my cunt clench around nothing, makes me ache for him deeper, harder, somewhere my mouth can't reach.

His grip tightens in my hair and he starts to move, shallow at first, testing, and I let him. I let him fuck my mouth in the dark, his hips finding a rhythm that makes my eyes water, my throat opening for him because I want it, because I want to be full of him, because the taste of him is the only thing that makes sense in this black room where my boyfriend just called my name.

"That's it," he grits out, his voice strained. "Take it. Take all of it."

He holds me there, buried deep, his cock throbbing against my tongue, and I feel the heat building in my belly, the slick between my thighs, the way my body is responding to being used like this—like I'm nothing but a warm hole for him, like I exist only to swallow him down.

Then he pulls me up, his hands rough on my arms, and spins me around. The cold metal of the door hits my cheek, and I hear the rustle of his clothes, the sound of him kicking off his boots, and then his chest is against my back, his breath hot on my neck, his cock pressing against the soaked cotton of my skirt.

"You've been so good for me," he says, his voice low and rough, his hand sliding up my thigh under the skirt. "So fucking good. And I'm going to reward you."

He pushes the skirt up, bunches it at my waist, and I feel the air on my bare skin, the heat of him at my entrance. He doesn't push in right away. He just holds there, the head of him pressing against me, teasing, and I whimper, pushing back against him, trying to take him.

"Not yet," he says, his hand flat on my lower back, pressing me against the door. "You're going to ask me."

"Please," I breathe, and the word is already a surrender. "Please, Derek."

"Please what?"

"Please fuck me."

He pushes inside me in one slow, endless motion, and I cry out, my palms flat on the cold metal, my forehead pressed to the door. He fills me completely, the stretch of him a burn that turns to pleasure, and I feel him throb inside me, deep, so deep I can feel him in my throat.

"This is what you wanted," he says, his voice strained, his hips starting to move. "This is what you snuck out for, left your door open for, lied to your boyfriend for." He thrusts into me, hard, and I gasp. "Me. Inside you. Filling you up."

He fucks me like he did when Ethan was out there—except now there's no fear, no danger, no need to be quiet. Now it's just him and me and the dark, and he's relentless, his hips slamming into me, his hand gripping my hip hard enough to bruise, the sound of skin on skin loud in the blackness.

"You feel that?" he grunts, his breath ragged. "You feel how deep I am? How much of me is inside you?"

I can't answer. I can only moan, my voice raw, my fingers scrabbling at the door, my body rocking with each thrust. He reaches around, his hand finding my clit, and I scream—actually scream—as he works me, his fingers rough and knowing, his cock driving into me at the same rhythm.

"Come for me," he commands, his voice a growl. "Come on my cock, baby. Let me feel you."

And I do. I come apart against the door, my cunt clenching around him, my body shaking, and I feel him follow, feel him pulse inside me, his cum flooding me, hot and thick, as he buries himself to the hilt.

We stay like that for a long moment, his chest against my back, his breath ragged in my ear, his cock softening inside me. Then he pulls out slowly, and I feel his cum leaking down my thighs, a warm trickle that makes me shiver.

He turns me around in the dark, his hands gentle now, his thumb tracing my jaw. I can't see his face, but I can feel the smile in his touch.

"Now," he says, his voice softer, almost tender. "Let's go home."