Dawn dragged itself over Chicago like a half-hearted apology, thin sheets of incinerated peach splintering across the towers, glass panes flashing the city’s hangover in staccato bursts. I’d spent the night prowling the loft like a caged fuse, replaying her perfume in my lungs, every exhale a countdown I couldn’t defuse.
She kicked the door at 6:03 a.m., one heel, no warning, steam wafting from her hair as if she’d showered in someone else’s sin and refused to towel off. The hallway light cast her in slanted amber: leather jacket half-buttoned, black lace under it, breathing harder than I was. She tossed a pastry box on the counter, croissants still sweating butter, and fixed her gaze on me like I was breakfast number two.
“You look awake,” she purred, voice wrapped in velvet and sandpaper. “Let’s see if you stay that way.”
Before I could blink, she crossed the room in three predatory strides. Fingertips ice-cold, needle-sharp found my jaw, tilting it until every nerve begged for instruction. She tasted of bourbon-spiked coffee and the kind of sunrise you only earn by misbehaving all night. Her kiss wasn’t an invitation; it was arson: lips parting just enough to spark, tongue setting off alarms my body didn’t know it had installed.
She peeled my shirt like she was stripping copper wire: quick, hard, a flicker of frustration every time cotton slowed her agenda. Nails skimmed across my torso, ten electric signatures scribbled in cursive, igniting sparks that ricocheted down my spine. I tried to breathe; she devoured the attempt, swallowing oxygen until I saw constellations swirl behind my eyelids.
“Bed,” she ordered in a single syllable, thunder-low, and shoved me backward onto sheets that still remembered yesterday’s tension. Sunlight knifed through the blinds, slicing our shadows across the room in ragged stripes. She straddled me, thighs cinched in black lace, hips rolling with decadent menace, and let her hair tumble forward, veiling us in a curtain that smelled of smoke and lilac.
Her teeth grazed my collarbone, testing the tensile strength of restraint; her quiet, wicked laugh confirmed it would snap soon enough. Fingers hooked into my belt, yanked it free with a sound like a match striking. Metal buckle hit hardwood, a cold clatter echoing off bare walls, and she bound my wrists to the headboard without blinking, improvising knots that felt dangerously educated.
I was pinned, lungful of filth, pulse sprinting while she hovered, eyes glittering with 5 a.m. mischief. “You aren’t the one trending anymore,” she whispered, lips brushing my ear so lightly it stung. “I am.”
Her mouth roamed neck, sternum, down the trail of nerves, screaming louder than the El at rush hour, each kiss a tattoo drawn in invisible ink that only heat could reveal. She paused over my heartbeat, palm flat, feeling it pound like bass in a stolen subwoofer. “Still awake,” she murmured, almost fond. Then she dug fingernails just enough to leave crescents of intention.
She slid down, slow as thawing ice, letting silk hair drag across hypersensitized skin. Every centimeter was an unanswered question; every exhale, the promise of rough grammar in the dialogue to follow. She bit the waistband of my jeans, pulled until denim surrendered, then rose again, hips swaying with a threat of rhythm.
Sunlight crept higher, turning dust motes into a private galaxy orbiting our collision. She traced a fingertip along my ribs, reading the topography like braille for the blindfolded wicked. “Tell me to stop,” she challenged, eyes dark with dare.
I laughed ragged and she rewarded the insolence by grinding down, pressure exquisite and almost cruel. The mattress fought back with springs that squealed in delirious applause. Outside, the city's engines revved, cyclists cursed the potholes, and a dog barked at nothing; the roar inside my skull swallowed mundane noises.
She rode a tempo that ignored my pleas for rhythm, changing speeds like a DJ spinning vinyl with a razor blade. Sweat blurred the borders between us; her hair slapped against my cheeks, scent now feral salt, citrus, erotic midnight decisions. My wrists strained against the belt; the leather groaned, the headboard rattled, and the entire room tilted off its foundation.
She leaned close, breath crashing against my jaw. “Morning newsflash,” she hissed, voice husky enough to gravel a throat: “You’re addicted.”
The climax hit with the subtlety of a freight train, blinding, bone-deep, unraveling muscles I hadn’t flexed since adolescence. She followed half a heartbeat later, gasp catching in her throat like a gun misfiring—then a laugh, throaty and victorious.
For a minute, maybe an hour, we lay tangled in the aftermat, sheets twisted, belt slack around my wrists, sunlight bathing us in a guilty spotlight. Her pulse drummed against my ribs, syncopated, satisfied. She untied me, kissed the raw leather marks with something resembling tenderness, then rolled out of bed and started plundering the pastry box.
Flakes of croissant clung to her lower lip; she licked them away with studied indifference. “You taste better,” she said, gesturing lazily with butter-glossed fingers. “But this’ll keep me vertical until the market opens.”
I pulled on jeans, still dizzy. “Where do you go after wrecking a man at sunrise?”
She smirked. “Anywhere complacency still thinks it’s safe.” She scribbled a number, possibly a stock ticker or her actual phone number, on the fridge using my last grocery receipt. “Lose that, you lose me.”
The door clicked shut. Her footsteps faded down the stairwell, leaving the loft humming with spent ozone and the warm ghost of bourbon-coffee kisses. Outside, Chicago shook off dawn’s blush and resumed its daily predation, but I stayed in that room, pulse still syncopated, wrist still burning with belt-print truth.
I stared at the fridge, number burning into memory, and wondered how long before the city spat me back into her orbit or how long before I strapped on ambition like armor and went hunting for her first. Either way, breakfast had never tasted so dangerous.
- JSPC ] Street Artist of Wanton [
“Leather Hymns, No Safe Word”
