Page 37 of Lady and the Hitman

There was something thrilling about being here like this.

In a city where I didn’t know a soul.

Where I could let down my guard without worrying about disappointing anyone.

Without thinking about how the moment might read in a tweet or scan in someone else’s column.

There was no context for this version of me. No frame of reference.

No watchful editor. No ex-boyfriend with a Google Alert set to my name.

No quiet shame from my mother. No intellectual eye-roll from former professors who would’ve called this kind of submission regressive.

No Mina texting “???” the second I missed a scheduled FaceTime.

My phone was still in my bag, wherever he’d stashed it in the SUV. I’d turned it off before the plane took off—somewhere between obedience and self-preservation—and hadn’t touched it since. I wasn’teven sure I wanted to. The thought of the screen lighting up with group texts or news alerts or another reminder from my calendar felt … suffocating. Like a lifeline I no longer needed.

There was just heat.

And him.

And the strange, electric sense that I could become anything here.

I leaned against the alley wall a moment longer, breath steadying, skin still pulsing with unsatisfied want. My dress clung to my thighs in places I could still feel him. Even if he hadn’t touched me.

Not really.

I hadn’t posted all day.

I hadn’t emailed my editor.

I hadn’t answered my mother’s last text, which had just saidBusy?followed by a heart.

My social feeds were quiet. My inbox untouched. My location—if anyone was looking—was simply … off.

I’d built my career carefully.

Brick by brick.

I was the smart one. The rising star in investigative media. Trusted by sources, editors, readers. The woman who could walk into any political fundraiser and leave with a scandal no one else had sniffed out.

And here I was—barely dressed, soaking wet between my thighs, obeying the voice of a stranger through an earpiece like I belonged to him.

Worse—wanting to belong to him.

What would they say, the people who’d followed me? Who’d hired me? Who’d believed in me?

What would my grandfather think?

A flush of guilt crept up my neck.

But even that shame

felt like foreplay now.

I was just beginning to catch my breath when I felt it: the shift in air, the quiet gravity of his presence.

He didn’t speak.