T.S.Noir

  The quiet hum of the line stretched across the miles, our only companion in a night that seemed eternal.

  It was an echo of the distance between us, a whispered secret holding its breath in the dark. When her voice finally came, it was hesitant yet warm, like a moth drawn to a fme it knew would burn but couldn’t resist.

  That voice pulled me back into memories I thought buried, filling them with color and life. We talked like conspirators, words flowing until the darkness was exhausted and gave way to dawn. It felt dangerously intimate, more binding than touch or presence ever could.

  it’s that time of the night, around this time usually my phone would ring and Sabrina’s face going to show on the screen.

  “Ah right on time, Hello Sabrina I was just about to call you”

  “I beat you to it, then,” she teased, a smile woven through each word. We both ughed, but beneath the surface of our mirth lurked something far more potent.

  “It’s been...a day,” she said with a sigh.

  “What happened? Did Dunham pull another stunt?” I bit back the satisfaction at the thought of his failing grasp on her.

  “I can handle John,” Sabrina replied, a strain in her voice that betrayed just how tightly she clung to control. “It’s everything else.”

  “Everything else?” I pressed, knowing that even this distance between us was a carefully constructed intimacy.

  She hesitated, the silence swelling like a bruise. “Does it ever get easier, Leon?”

  I let her words hover there, needing them to be earnest even if they were reproachful. “Sometimes.”

  “Then you’re luckier than me,” she said softly.

  “I am lucky,” I replied, my voice thick with meanings she couldn’t yet untangle. “Lucky to have you picking up when I call.”

  There was the slightest hitch in her breath—that catch of emotion she tried so hard to keep from me. “I should go,” Sabrina whispered, regret and relief braided into her goodbye.

  “Wait, do you want to talk about it?”

  “It’s nothing really it just.” Sabrina sigh.

  “Hey, you know I can’t sleep knowing you have something going on right” I put on a reassuring tone to make her believe that I truly care about her problem.

  “Well, you know john right, after you invested in our company, the company been thriving, but john being john, he has to bring some shady client that might potentially ruin the company again. the worst part is…” Sabrina went silent, hesitate to continue her thought. “The worst part is?” I asked her.

  “The worst part is he wanted me to please all of his clients, each night he will bring me to a different man, just so that his deal will go through. can you believe it? my own husband deliberately sold me out for his own gain.” In Sabrina's voice, I could hear the hurt, anger, and desperation as she spoke of having to please all of John's clients. Each word was like a dagger piercing through her heart.

  There was the sharp edge of rawness in her admission. I imagined her standing at a precipice, her composure cracking under the weight of what she had just revealed.

  My mouth went dry as she described being passed around to different men, using her body to please them for her husband's gain.

  The bitterness of the situation left an unpleasant taste in my mouth.

  Is this a ruse? Is this an attempt to win my heart over, does she really tell the truth?

  I heard the rumors, that Sabrina Greensky will do anything to achieve her goal, that for the right price she will let you taste heaven.

  But this, if this is true then.

  “Sabrina,” I said, letting my voice fill with the warmth of sympathy. “You deserve better than that.”

  “Do I?” she asked, and for the first time that night, there was something unguarded in her voice—a naked vulnerability that made me picture Li, made that old fury fre again. “Maybe I’ve just gotten used to it.”

  I let the silence drag out until it felt like a promise. “You’re stronger than you think. You can just say no.”

  “I wish I could believe you,” Sabrina said, but there was a hint of hope threaded through her disbelief.

  “You will,” I replied, conviction seeping into every word.

  She breathed out, long and slow. “Thank you, Leon.”

  We stayed on the line, each waiting for the other to give some sign that we were ready to let go.

  But something inside me snapped, I don’t know where the idea came from, but for a moment I heard Li speaking to me to stay on the line, to reach out for Sabrina.

  “What are you doing after this?” I finally broke the silence, “its almost 10 PM, I’m on my pajamas, apparently tonight John got no Client for me”

  A sudden notion unfurled, reckless and tempting. “Then pack a bag.”

  She sounded puzzled. “Where are we going?”

  “Paris,” I said, the word heavy with impulse and promise. “Meet me at the airport. there will be someone picking you up and I’ll have the jet ready.”

  “Leon,” she breathed, surprise and uncertainty coloring her voice.

  Her hesitation was fleeting. I answered it with silence, knowing she wouldn’t resist for long.

  “I’m only in pajamas,” Sabrina said again, thinner this time, wearing down to nothing.

  “There will be plenty of time to change,” I replied, letting anticipation bleed into each sylble, like ink seeping through paper.

  “What about your pns? Your business?” The reluctance was barely a whisper against the pull of the unknown.

  “You’re more important,” I said simply, crafting my words to push her past doubt and into action.

  She ughed, finally giving in to the madness of it. “You’re impossible.”

  “I’ll take that as a yes?”

  “Yes,” Sabrina confirmed, her tone both exasperated and exhirated. “I’ll see you soon.” There was a click as she hung up, leaving me with the satisfaction of another move well-pyed.

  I set the phone down and let myself bask in the knowledge that even continents couldn’t distance Sabrina from me.

  “Sebastian, did you catch all that?”

  "Yes, sir," came his voice, smooth and assured. "Shall I prepare for your absence?"

  "A few days, no more," I said, already calcuting how to turn this excursion into a further tightening of my web around her. "Make sure Sabrina gets to the airport without any interference."

  Sebastian's approval was like a nod through the line. "And Mr. Wick? Will he dey anything while you're away?"

  "Let him prepare," I replied. "It will make Sabrina's capture that much sweeter when she thinks I've forgotten everything else for her." The thrill of it spun in me like a double-edged bde. She was closer now than ever before, slipping into the trap with each move we made.

  "Very well, sir," Sebastian said, efficient and unerring as always.

  I pictured him at Bckwood Tower, orchestrating from the shadows as precise as a maestro. The thought of Wick kept simmering in my mind, the danger enthralling and inevitable.

  "Keep me posted," I said before hanging up.

  Through the window, Bckbourne City sprawled beneath me, its lights a choir of conspiracy and betrayal. It was too te to back out now; we were all set on a course that could only end in ruin or redemption—or both.

  I left for the airport.

  Sabrina arrived at the airport 10 minutes ter than me, I helped her climb the jet’s stairs. The ride to Paris was quiet, we said nothing to each other yet our hands never part.

  We arrived in the glow of Parisian lights, the city welcoming us with its seductive embrace.

  Her eyes sparkled with an excitement that mirrored my own, and for the first time in longer than I cared to remember, I felt alive in the most terrifying way.

  The streets were a dreamscape of soft edges and whispered promises, the air thick with possibilities we hadn’t yet dared to name.

  Sabrina ughed as I fumbled my way through an impromptu itinerary, her delight infectious and pure.

  We wandered without direction, letting the city guide us like leaves on a pyful wind. Notre Dame, Montmartre, the Seine at dusk; each stop a backdrop to the unfolding revetion of who we were together.

  “This was reckless,” she admitted over dinner, her voice carrying both amazement and a hint of fear.

  “Some things are worth the risk,” I said, knowing we were no longer speaking of the trip.

  She held my gaze, a fragile understanding passing between us, and I saw the beginning of her resolve to surrender to this, whatever this was. But the shadows of doubt lingered, hovering at the edge of our light.

  As the night wore on, the conversation turned inward, peeling back the yers of who we had been and who we wanted to be.

  The rawness of it, the truth that y beneath our fa?ades, was both liberating and suffocating.

  “Sometimes,” Sabrina confessed, her voice barely a whisper, “I wonder if I’ve forgotten how to be happy.”

  The vulnerability of her words pierced me in a way I hadn’t expected. “Maybe you’re remembering now,” I suggested, my own walls crumbling as I spoke.

  We walked back to the hotel in silence, our steps synchronized like a dance neither of us had practiced. The weight of our unspoken fears trailed behind, yet somehow, for that moment, we were free.

  “At the entrance of the grand hotel, I asked Sabrina “do you want to go home?”

  She paused, considering the question as if it were den with gss. “No,” she decided, with a certainty that seemed to surprise herself. “Not yet.”

  I nodded, allowing a small smile to betray my satisfaction.

  Past actions and future consequences tangled in my mind like a lover's quarrel, refusing to separate.

  Paris had not been part of my original pn, but its allure—and Sabrina's—had proven too strong to resist.

  Inside, the hotel was a pace of extravagance and illusion, the kind of pce where every desire could be indulged if you dared to ask.

  We checked in, our intentions as loose and undefined as the pns that had brought us here.

  We took the elevator in silence, ascending toward a night that promised both everything and nothing.

  The room was a stunning panorama of excess and opulence, but it was the sight of her standing against that backdrop that captured me completely.

  I watched as she slipped off her coat and uncertainty like a second skin. “This is surreal,” she said, spinning slowly to take it all in.

  “We can wake up tomorrow and pretend it never happened,” I offered, trying not to betray how much I both wanted and feared that possibility.

  She smiled, radiant and ephemeral. “What if I don’t want to pretend?”

  “I meant it when I said you’re more important,” I reminded her, taking deliberate steps closer.

  For a moment she stood still, then moved towards me with a resolve that melted into vulnerability by the time our paths met. Her lips brushed against mine with an urgency that said more than words ever could.

  We forgot everything then—the schemes, the betrayals, even the city outside—losing ourselves in each other like an unholy prayer whispered in desperate devotion.

  It was raw and consuming and haunted by all we carried within us.

  I felt her surrender as we stripped away every st pretense and boundary, the world shrinking to just us. Skin against skin, our pasts merged like a crimson tide.

  We made love with a kind of violent tenderness that left no part untouched, wanting and giving in equal measure.

  Each kiss was a vow we weren't ready to make but couldn't help repeating.

  Her nails dug into my back, and I welcomed the pain as penance and pleasure intertwined until they were indistinguishable.

  Her whisper of my name was both salvation and damnation, echoed by a moan that shattered what was left of our resolve.

  Sabrina’s breath was hot on my neck, her hands insistent and everywhere.

  We moved together, lost in the heat of unspoken truths and desperate needs.

  The rhythm was frenzied then slow then frenzied again, as though we could never have enough of what the other offered.

  It was recklessness incarnate, bliss tinged with madness, and I knew—I knew—that it would destroy us both if we let it.

  When we finally colpsed into each other, she trembled against me, and I wondered if it was from exhaustion or fear.

  There was silence except for our breathing, heavy and uneven like footsteps receding into the distance.

  I pulled her up, unable to meet my own gaze reflected in her eyes.

  There was too much there, too much of everything—anger and need, lust and betrayal—so tightly wound and interwoven we could no longer tell them apart.

  I kissed her again, trying to lose myself where I couldn't be found. But even here, ghosts lingered.

  She was tenacious in wanting all of me; I was adept at giving only what would bind her tighter.

  The urgency mounted, her low moans stoking the embers to bze once more.

  Flesh and intention cshed until nothing made sense except the fevered feeling that this couldn't st.

  That it shouldn't yet inevitably would.

  Sabrina arched and called my name with a rawness that set me on edge.

  Her eyes met mine again, softer now but still burning with questions I refused to answer.

  We y entangled in a silence fraught with what remained unsaid. Her head rested on my chest, her hand on my jaw.

  “Sabrina, that was. “

  But I faltered, unable to complete the thought. What was it, really? The height of insanity? A mistake we’d keep repeating until one—or both—of us perished from its weight?

  Her fingers traced delicate patterns on my skin, waiting for me to surrender sentiment. A sigh escaped her lips, barely audible yet enough to cut through the tension that refused to dissipate.

  “We could be unstoppable,” she whispered, but the words clung to doubt. They hung in air thick with our mingled breath and unvoiced suspicions, floating like specters of promises we had no intention of keeps keeping.

  I wanted to ugh at her audacity and cry at my own, but instead I allowed silence to do what ughter and tears could not—it carved out a space for deception to masquerade as truth.

  "We will be," I lied with practiced ease, feeling her body rex into me as if deceit were a comfort rather than a curse.

  Even in the dark, even in moments where passion should have eclipsed anything else, our past loomed like an unwanted witness.

  Her warmth became a weight; her closeness, a tether I knew I'd eventually have to cut.

  That night, we crossed the threshold from deceit to desire, from strategy to sincerity. As we y entwined, the line between truth and illusion blurred until it vanished, leaving us with nothing but the raw pulse of our joined hearts.

  In the morning, the Paris light crept gently across the room, casting everything in a hopeful glow.

  But hope was a dangerous thing, and we both knew it.

  We dressed slowly, the silence between us now full of meaning, of questions that demanded answers we weren’t ready to give.

  Over breakfast, Sabrina looked at me with a seriousness that both thrilled and terrified. “What happens now?” she asked, the three words den with all the uncertainty of our precarious gamble.

  “We go back,” I said, unsure if I meant to reality or to each other.

  “And us?” Her voice wavered, a hint of the doubt that would be our constant companion.

  “Let’s see,” I replied, knowing that the simple phrase held all the complexity of our uncharted future.

  We walked the streets once more, Paris now a backdrop to our newfound entanglement.

  The city’s magic was no longer a distraction; it was a reflection of the chaos within us, beautiful and untamed.

  The fa?ade of our pns was cracking, and beneath it, something genuine struggled to break free.

  Sabrina stopped at a corner, the soft rain beginning to fall like the tentative tears of a forgiving sky. “I’m scared, Leon,” she said, her voice stripped of its usual armor.

  I took her hand, feeling the pulse of something real. “So am I,” I admitted, the truth a welcome burden.

  We stood in the rain, letting it wash over us like an unspoken promise. Paris blurred around us, and for a moment, it was enough to simply be.

  That night, as we packed our things, the quiet was heavy with the knowledge that nothing could ever be the same.

  We had crossed a line; one we could never retreat from. But as Sabrina’s hand brushed mine, I wondered if perhaps we didn’t want to.

  The trip back was filled with a charged silence, words hovering just beyond our reach, waiting to redefine us.

  In the distance, the lights of Paris faded, but the memory of them burned brightly, a beacon and a warning.

  We returned to our world, armed with the dangerous knowledge of what y beneath our schemes. As the familiar shadows closed in,

  I knew the stakes had never been higher, but for the first time, I felt that maybe, just maybe, the game was worth it.

  ??

  T.S.Noir