The doors slid shut on the corridor's dim orange light, and the small box went bright, white, humming. Mirrors on three sides. Xiao Lie caught herself in all of them at once — a girl in a work blouse standing too straight, hair pushed back from her face, cheeks already flushing. Sang Yan stood behind her shoulder in the reflection, and the reflection did not flinch.

Neither of them spoke. The floor numbers climbed, one by one, each chime a small bell in the quiet. She watched the red digits in the mirror instead of him. Twelve. Thirteen. His reflection shifted.

He turned to face her. Not fast. He gave her the whole turn, slow enough that she could have stepped back, and she did not, and the mirror on the back wall gave her his front and the mirror on the side gave her his profile and there was nowhere in the box that was not him. His eyes moved down the line of her jaw, her throat, and stopped at the notch at the base of it, where her pulse had gone stupid and loud.

He stepped in. Not touching. Close enough that she felt the heat coming off his chest through the cotton of his shirt, close enough that his breath landed warm on her forehead and stirred the loose strands there. The elevator hummed. The numbers climbed. Her hands hung at her sides and did not know where to go.

"You came," he said.

Low. Rough at the edges, like he'd had to pull the words up from somewhere deep to get them out at all. It was not a question. It was the sound of a man confirming something he'd already decided.

Xiao Lie's throat worked. "I said I would."

"You said a lot of things." His hand came up. She watched it in the mirror — the reflection of his fingers finding the hem of her blouse at her waist, the fabric lifting a fraction, the cool air of the car touching the strip of skin above her skirt band. His thumb pressed flat against the ridge of the waistband and dragged, slow, from one hip to the other. "You said you were getting a charger."

Her breath caught. "I—"

"Don't." The thumb stopped at her hip bone. "Don't lie to me in here. There's nowhere to put the lie."

The elevator chimed. Eighteen. The doors did not open. He had not pressed a button, she realized — he'd pressed his floor from the lobby, and the car was carrying them up through the building in one long unbroken climb, and there was nothing between her and the thirty-second floor but the hum and the mirrors and his body a hand's width away.

She put her hands on his chest. She did not plan to. They went there on their own, palms flat against the linen, and under her right hand she felt it — his heart, going hard and even, a slow drum under all that muscle. Not racing. Steady. He had been waiting, and he was not nervous, and somehow that was worse than if he had been.

"No running now," he said.

His fingers found the hem again, and this time they curled into it and pulled, working the blouse free of the skirt band all the way around, the fabric bunching loose at her waist. Cool air moved against her lower back. The mirrors showed her the back of her own blouse riding up, a sliver of skin above her skirt, and the reflection of his hand resting there, wide across her ribs.

She should say something. She knew she should say something. Her mouth opened and the elevator chimed and the doors slid apart onto a corridor that was silent and carpeted and smelled of nothing at all.

He took her wrist.

His grip was loose — she could have pulled free without trying — and that was the whole of it, that he did not need to hold her hard, that he walked her down the corridor with her wrist in his hand like a thing he had every right to carry, and she went. Her heels made no sound on the carpet. The corridor was short and dark and ended at a single door, and he stopped at it and pressed his thumb to the lock, and the mechanism clicked.

The door swung in on darkness.

He let go of her wrist and put his hand at the small of her back instead, and the flat of his palm was warm through the thin cotton, and he guided her over the threshold into the black.

The door closed behind them. The lock turned. The corridor's light went out with it, and the penthouse was dark — not the dark of a room with curtains drawn, but the real dark of a space with no lights on at all, where the city outside was only a faint grey wash at the far end of a hallway she could not see.

She stood still. Her own breathing was loud in the black. Somewhere ahead of her, the hum of a refrigerator. Somewhere below, the city.

His hands found her waist.

Both of them, sure in the dark, no fumbling — he knew where she was because he had been watching her the whole way in, and he pulled her back against him and her shoulder blades met his chest and his chin came down against the side of her head and for one moment he just held her there, breathing into her hair, and she felt his chest rise and fall against her back.

Then he turned her.

His mouth found hers in the black.

It was careful. That was the thing she would remember — that the first kiss in the dark was careful, closed, his lips dry and warm and pressed to hers without hurry, like he was tasting something he had waited a long time for and did not want to waste by rushing. His hand came up to her jaw and tilted her head back, and his thumb stroked once along the hinge of it, and he kissed her again, and again, small kisses, each one a little deeper than the last, and by the fourth her mouth had opened under his without her deciding to open it.

He made a sound low in his chest. Approval, or hunger, or both. His tongue touched her lower lip, once, and then he pulled back — just far enough that his breath was on her mouth and his forehead rested against hers, and in the dark she could feel his eyes on her even though she could not see them.

"Good," he said. "That's good."

Her hands were still flat on his chest. She had not moved them. She realized she had been holding her breath and let it out, and the sound of it was small and embarrassing in the dark.

"Sang Yan—"

"I know." His thumb moved at her jaw. "I know what you're going to say. You're going to say you shouldn't be here."

"I shouldn't."

"You're here."

The dark swallowed the words. She could feel the room around her — the cold of a floor she could not see, the hush of a space too big to be a room, the faint hum of something electric running somewhere behind a wall. His grip on her jaw was not tight. His other hand had slid down her back, palm flat, and was resting at the top of her ass, not moving, just there, and the weight of it was a statement.

"I want to show you something," he said.

"What."

"That you don't have to be scared of this." His thumb moved again, along her jaw, down to her throat, and stopped in the hollow at the base of it where her pulse was still going like a caught bird. He pressed there, gently, feeling it. "You're shaking."

"I'm not."

"You are." He sounded almost pleased. "It's all right. I like it."

He stepped back. The warmth of him went with him, and the dark got colder, and she heard the soft sound of his shoes on the floor moving away from her, and then a click, and a low lamp came on across the room — not the overhead, just a single light on a console table, throwing a warm half-circle onto the floor and leaving everything beyond it in shadow. She could see the shape of the space now: high ceilings, a wall of glass at the far end with the city strung across it in points of light, a long low sofa, a kitchen island in grey stone, and a hallway leading off to the right that went dark again almost immediately.

He was standing at the console with his back to her, shrugging out of his jacket. He hung it over the back of a chair — precisely, the way he did everything — and then he turned around and looked at her across the room.

She had not moved from the door.

"You can stay there," he said. "Or you can come here. Both of those are fine." He rolled his sleeves up over his forearms, one and then the other. "But if you stay there much longer I'm going to come get you, and I'd rather you walked."

Her bag was still in her hand. She had forgotten she was holding it. She set it down on the floor by the door, and the small sound it made was the loudest thing in the room.

Then she walked.

The floor was cold through her stockings. She crossed the half-circle of lamplight and he watched her the whole way, hands loose at his sides, and when she got close enough he reached out and caught her by the waist and pulled her in, and this kiss was not careful.

His mouth came down on hers hard and open, and his tongue was in her mouth and one hand was in her hair at the back of her head, tilting her, holding her where he wanted her, and the other hand went to her skirt and found the zipper at the side and pulled it down in one long rasp of teeth. The skirt loosened at her waist. He pushed it, and it slid down her legs and pooled at her feet and she stepped out of it without breaking the kiss and did not know why she had done that.

He pulled back just far enough to look at her. Stockings, blouse, no skirt. His jaw was tight. His eyes had gone dark in a way that had nothing to do with the lamp.

"Bedroom," he said.

He took her hand and led her down the dark hallway, and she went, and the hallway was short and ended at a door that was already open, and beyond it the room was lit by the city — the whole far wall was glass, and the bed was low and wide and white, and the light coming off Shanghai was enough to see by, silver and orange and moving slowly across the ceiling as the traffic crawled below.

He stopped her at the foot of the bed and turned her to face him.

"Last chance," he said. His voice was low and even and he did not look like a man who expected her to take it. "Say no and I'll walk you back down to the lobby myself."

Xiao Lie looked at him. His shirt was open at the collar. His forearms were bare and the veins stood up on them. His mouth was wet from hers. She thought about the cold rice in her fridge, and the charger coiled at the bottom of her bag, and the lie she had told Sang Zhi, and all of it seemed very far away, on the other side of a door that had already locked.

She did not say no.

He moved then, and it was fast — his hands went to the front of her blouse and worked the buttons open one after another, no patience left in them, and when he reached the last one he pushed the blouse off her shoulders and it fell somewhere behind her and she was standing in her stockings and her bra in the moving city light, and he looked at her for a long moment with his chest going hard and his hands still at his sides, and then he put one hand flat on her sternum and pushed.

She went back onto the bed.

The sheets were cool. He came down over her, one knee on the mattress, and his weight pressed her into the white and his mouth was on her throat, then her collarbone, then the swell of her breast above the cup of her bra, and his hand went behind her and unhooked it with one turn of his wrist and pulled it away and his mouth closed over her nipple and she heard herself make a sound she had never made before.

He sucked. Hard, then soft, then hard again, and his tongue flattened against her and his teeth grazed and she arched up off the bed into his mouth without meaning to and her hands came up and found the back of his head and held him there. Her stockings were still on. She could feel how wet she was, the fabric of her underwear gone slick against her, and she pressed her thighs together to hide it and he felt that and lifted his head.

"Don't," he said.

He put his hand on her knee and pushed her legs apart. Then he sat back on his heels and looked down at her — spread out on his bed in the city light, stockings, underwear, nothing else — and something moved across his face that she could not name, and he said, very quietly, almost to himself, "There you are."

Then he hooked his fingers into the waistband of her underwear and pulled it down her legs, and the stockings with it, and tossed them off the bed, and she was naked under him in the light from the window and there was nowhere to put her hands.

He moved down her body.

His mouth went down her stomach, and his hands went to the inside of her thighs and pushed them wide, wider than she would have opened them on her own, and he settled his shoulders between her knees and looked up the length of her body at her face.

"Watch me," he said.

Then he put his mouth on her.

The first touch of his tongue made her whole body jerk. He had her legs pinned open with his forearms so she could not close them, and his tongue was flat and wet and slow, dragging up the length of her, and she heard the sound it made and her face went hot and she tried to pull away and there was nowhere to go. He did it again. Slower. His tongue found the top of her, the small hard place there, and circled it once, and her hips came up off the bed and his hands caught her and held her down.

"Sang Yan—"

He did not answer. He sucked, and her hands went into the sheets, and the city light moved across the ceiling and she watched it because there was nothing else to watch and if she looked down at his head between her legs she thought she might die. His tongue was inside her and then on her clit and then inside again, and his nose pressed into her with every stroke, and the sounds coming out of her mouth were not sounds she recognized, and the wet noise of his mouth on her was loud in the quiet room.

He worked her like that for a long time. He did not hurry. Every time she got close to something he slowed down and pulled her back from it, his tongue going soft and wide, and every time she thought she could not stand it he went hard and fast again, and she was gripping the sheets and her heels were digging into the mattress and she had stopped watching the ceiling and was watching him now, watching the way his shoulders moved between her thighs, the way his hands held her open.

"Please," she said. She did not know what she was asking for.

He lifted his head just enough to speak against her, his mouth still wet on her skin. "Please what."

"I don't—"

"Then I'll keep going."

He put his mouth back on her and this time he did not slow down. His tongue was fast and hard on her clit and two of his fingers pushed into her at once, curling up inside her, and she came apart on his mouth with a sound that started in her chest and came out broken, her thighs clamping around his head and her hands fisting in the sheets and her whole body shaking around his fingers, and he did not stop, he kept his mouth on her through all of it, working her through the shudders until she was pushing at his head with both hands because it was too much.

He sat up. His chin was wet. He wiped it with the back of his wrist and looked at her lying there, chest heaving, hair everywhere, and he was still fully dressed.

"Good girl," he said.

He stood up off the bed and undid his belt. The buckle clicked. He pushed his trousers down and stepped out of them, and then his underwear, and she saw him for the first time in the moving light from the window — thick, and long, and standing up hard against his stomach, and her mouth went dry.

He came back onto the bed over her. His knees pushed her legs wide again and he settled between them, and the weight of him came down on her, chest to chest, skin to skin, and she felt the length of him pressed hot against the inside of her thigh.

"Look at me," he said.

She looked at him. His face was close enough that she could see the sweat at his hairline, the tightness around his mouth.

He reached down between them and she felt the head of him against her, sliding through how wet she was, once, twice, and then he pushed.

The stretch went through her like a slow crack of light. She gasped and her hands came up and grabbed his shoulders and her nails dug in, and he stopped with just the head of him inside her, breathing hard through his nose, his forehead down against hers.

"Breathe," he said.

She breathed. He pushed again, slow, and the stretch deepened, and it burned, and it was the most full she had ever been in her life, and he kept going, inch by inch, until his hips were flat against the inside of her thighs and he was all the way inside her and she could feel him in her stomach.

He held there. Not moving. His whole body was shaking.

"Xiao Lie," he said. Just her name. Like it was the only word he had.

Then he started to move.

Slow at first, long strokes, pulling almost all the way out and pushing back in until his hips met hers, and every stroke dragged along something inside her that made her toes curl. The bed creaked. The city light moved. His mouth was at her ear, and he was saying things — low, half-broken things, her name and mine and you're mine — and she had her arms around his back and her heels locked behind his thighs and she was meeting him now, rocking up into each stroke, and the wet sound of it filled the room.

"Faster," she said.

He made a sound like a laugh and a groan at once. "You want faster."

"Yes—"

He gave it to her. His hips snapped and the bed hit the wall and she cried out and he caught her mouth with his and swallowed the sound, and he fucked her hard and fast with his hand braced on the headboard and his whole weight driving down into her, and she was climbing again, that same tightness building low in her belly, and he felt it and went harder.

"Come on," he said against her mouth. "Come on my cock. Let me feel it."

She came with her hands in his hair and his name in her mouth, and her pussy clenched down hard around him, and he groaned like something had broken in him and drove in deep and stayed, his hips pinned to hers, and she felt him spill — hot, and a lot of it, pulsing into her in long throbs while he held himself all the way inside her and shook.

He did not pull out.

He stayed there, buried in her, his weight on his forearms, breathing hard against her neck. The city light crawled across the ceiling. Somewhere below, a siren started and faded. Her hands were still in his hair. His heart was going hard against her chest, and this time it was not steady at all.

After a long while he lifted his head and looked down at her, and his eyes were different now — softer, and something else underneath, something that had been there all along and was only now allowed to show.

"You're not going home tonight," he said.

It was not a question. He shifted his hips, still inside her, and she felt him move in her, and she understood that he had not finished with her, that this had only been the first time, and that the door in the corridor was locked and her bag was still on the floor by it and Sang Zhi thought she was getting a charger.

He kissed her forehead, and then her mouth, and then he began to move again.