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Karen was dancing. In a churn of light and haze, pleasantly tipsy, just far enough removed from her life to care, Karen spun and her hips swayed and she felt good .Alone, but good.Somewhere near the bar, her friend Remy was still happily perched in the lap of Will, the blond tech bro who had invited them out tonight. Karen had ignored the eyes (and hands) of Will’s crowd easily when they arrived; all she wanted was to forget herself tonight and dance.Remy was a good dancer, but Remy had stubbornly ignored Karen’s attempts to drag her from the tables to the floor. In a pinch, dancing with Remy and Will together would have done nicely for a distraction. Karen was done waiting, though. The music was too good and she was too greedy for this feeling. Pour a glass and bite my tongue , Bebe Rexha’s voice poured in an EDM stutter. You say I’m the only one ...The lights flashed brilliant yellow-green, pulsing with the beat across Karen’s warm skin and over the crowd. She ground her hips and let it feel exactly the way she wanted it to feel.A couple parted around her, encapsulating her for a moment -- the girl a tiny brunette with pretty gray eyes beneath her low, trendy fringe, the guy smooth-cheeked and handsome and nice enough, or at least not sleazy -- but it all seemed like too much, too suddenly. Karen slung one arm around the girl’s shoulder and spun herself out of their midst.The girl turned to look at Karen over one shoulder, eyes wide with invitation and daring. Karen used the excuse of the music to press the couple close to each other, maneuvering the girl by her slim hips. Gray Eyes made a happy, surprised sound of pleasure at that and it made Karen want to go a little further, maybe. But instead she turned and left them there. She headed to the bar.She’d wanted someone, but something about the couple’s easy invitation left her feeling cold. An ache was planted in her gut like a stone. Stupid, this was stupid, she told herself. Dancing felt good, right? Why overthink this?Why think about Frank? Why, indeed.She needed another drink.“Whiskey, neat.” She slid money across the bar and minutes later the glass was pleasantly heavy and cool in her hand. Nothing like Josie’s barware. She downed it in two gulps.Time to seek out Miss Gray Eyes and Mr Smooth. She wanted to use up every piece of softness and sweet fire they could offer. She’d eat them up like the cat who got the cream.Surely then the sting of Frank’s rejection would fade. *** Karen had never intended to proposition Frank.That was what she told herself when she remembered what had happened. The memory made her screw her eyes shut so tightly she saw stars. Painful, to be humiliated like that.It had been only a few days ago. The sting was so fresh she could feel it on her skin when she thought about it too much.He’d come back to town under an assumed name, looking for his old friend Billy Russo. With no leads and time to kill, Frank had dropped her a burner phone and she’d gone to meet him at what turned out to be his basement squat in a condemned building.It had been so long since she’d seen him. She had been early. Unable to keep herself away.Karen had told herself a million times to treat Frank as a source, as a connection, as a friend who saved her from death; to keep him at a distance because there was no way in hell she should let her heart go anywhere near this man, the Punisher , whose life and deeds were written in blood everywhere he went. Who did not seem to care if he died in pursuit of his goals. Who might save her from the bullets but still break her heart.All that was useless. She still dreamed about him. Still wished she’d find him again lingering outside her apartment door in a filthy hoodie. Still drank her coffee black at that diner once in a while and thought about him until her skin got too warm and she had to walk briskly in the cold air to regain focus.So when he returned to town, she was more than eager. She told herself it was friendly worry that brought her to his place early.It wasn’t. It was a fierce need to see him, to touch him. To wrap her arms around his muscled frame and reassure herself that he was real and alive and that his scent was exactly as she remembered it.She found the door to the basement at the bottom of a cement stairwell, perfectly hidden. In the unlit, unheated darkness, beyond ammunition crates and ballistic cases of stockpiled weapons, Karen saw the other reason why he’d chosen this place. The ropes of a boxing ring loomed beyond a set of pull-up bars and a speed bag and a few heavy-duty hooks, some still sporting their old, half-sprung punching bags.Still, she’d been unprepared when he stepped out of the gloom.Bare to the waist. Sweatpants slung low on his hips.Those hips of his, oh god. His whole torso burnished with sweat, his arms and every scar gleaming. Cut just like in her filthiest dreams.Karen felt her mouth go dry.“Karen. You’re early.” His voice was roughened with exertion. And an aggression, a heat she knew so well. Yet there was a look in his eyes, his lids low as he looked her up and down for a moment, starting to unwrap the white tape from his hands.Hunger.For a second, a cold tremor rippled down Karen’s skin as she reckoned with the voice in her head that said Maybe he wants it as much as you do . The voice that said Dare you .She stepped closer in a rush, her heartbeat ratcheting faster in her veins. “Frank, it’s so good to see you.” From up close, the expanse of his skin radiated heat and sweat that was sweet with his particular musk. The one that made her knees go a little weak, every time. It halted her in her tracks for a second.
Dare you to just lean in and smell him like you want to.
But she fumbled her courage and reached instead for the long tapes at his fingers, helping to pull it free. His eyes said a few things, hesitation and wariness, but he breathed in as if lulled by her nearness. The sound of his breath, so near to her, sent heat through her, searing and instant.“It’s been...a long time. Last time you saved me, I didn’t know if I was going to see you again to thank you. How am I supposed to hug you like this, Frank?” Karen sighed, sternly mocking, trying to distance herself from the crackling tension between them, unsure how to cross that ocean of roiling, electric, tidal need. He took the hand wraps from her and she brushed off her palms, stalling. “Do you even have running water here? You look like you need a shower.”“Do I?” His voice, low and rumbling, said he didn’t care, but he liked her looking. She didn’t know what to do with that look. It was all she could do to meet his eyes.He grunted. “Was planning to come use your shower. Steal all your nice towels, while I’m at it. Mess up your kitchen.” A half grin, a smirk, lingered and softened his eyes as he watched her. Steal me. Use me. Mess me up , Karen heard the terrible, begging voice echo in her head.“You can...you can do that.”“Can I?” A fast smile, there and gone. He licked his lips.“Yeah,” Karen breathed. He was closer now. Did he lean toward her, or did she imagine that sway in his stance? Those dark eyes locked on hers, dark as sin. “Any time. It’s the least I can do.” She had gone too breathy, the plea leaking into her voice a little, but what Karen really wanted to say just then was a little too dirty, a little too out of the blue. What can I possibly do to repay you? Let me show you… She wanted to be wrapped in his arms, in that salt-slicked skin. She wanted to close those final inches and capture him with her lips. She wanted to drop to her knees before him.That gruff, mean impassivity flickered on his face, wanting but not taking, just looking at the desire between them and saying nothing: this was the Frank she knew so well. The Frank she wanted so badly she could taste his skin in the air. It crackled between them.Karen touched his forearm, the ropy muscle beneath his hot skin was taut, tense. Hungry and full of liquid need, she began to sink down.Then he grasped her by the elbows, arresting her like steel, stopping her before her bent knee even got close to the floor. Everything rushed together and flew apart inside of her at that moment. She watched something slide shut in his expression.“You don’t owe me that, Karen.” He stood her on her feet and stepped back, wary. “You don’t owe me pity.”It was cold in that warehouse, so cold. She clutched at the sleeve of her sweater. The familiar planes of his face had gone hard and lightless. “You don’t owe me nothing.”“Frank, no...I--” she tried to step closer to him again, to reassure him, seeking that warmth between them, and it was gone.“I was just--just sayin’. I don’t mean nothing about your apartment. Just jokin’ around.” Frank stepped back, avoiding her eyes as he turned to retreat into the shadows of the cavernous space. Joking around? Oh my God. Karen wanted to die in that moment. How had she read this so very, very wrong?She left before she could be humiliated any further; the warmth that had been blushing in her cheeks since she walked in turned to angry, acidic fire. Don’t you fall into self-pity about this , she chided herself when she was back out on the sidewalk, walking fast enough that she could tell herself the freezing wind was responsible for startling tears from the corners of her eyes. Be a grown-up. Rejection wasn’t supposed to be the end of the world. But it was Frank. Frank who she’d been dreaming about. Frank whose voice she’d been waiting to hear for months. Frank whose name had been on her lips, alone in her bed in the small hours of the night many, many times.Frank who she had dared to reach for and he’d said...no.It burned. *** Her Uber driver was suspicious about the abandoned building. Karen mustered some excuse that was not I need to confront the Punisher and headed around the back only after the car drove off. Two hours on the dance floor had been enough to sweat out most of her whiskey and now she was just on the sober side of tipsy, and starting to wonder whether she’d been on the wrong side of that divide when she’d typed the address into the app a little earlier.As it turned out, Gray Eyes had been a good dancer, or at least a passable replacement for Remy. But whiskey hadn’t done the trick. Sandwiched between Gray Eyes and Mr. Smooth on the dance floor, desire never quite bubbling to the surface, Karen knew these were the wrong hands touching her. The wrong lips brushing her ear.In the end, she’d given them her old anonymous Gmail instead of a fake number. She typed it into Gray’s phone, just a K with a unicorn emoji. And then ducked into her Uber and headed to the last place she should go, probably.Definitely.The door was unlocked.So he was here.Her heart kicked in her chest, nervous and embarrassed and righteous and a slippery little eel of thwarted desire flipping around inside.From the scent on the air and the silence that greeted her, she gathered that he must have just finished a workout. The silent underground space, still dark and chilly, held the pungent tang of sweat and the soft, aged musk of leather from the pummeled old punching bags. Beneath that she also detected the darker, more dangerous undercurrent of gunpowder.He wouldn’t let anyone else in but her, this she knew. It was a gesture of his trust. It couldn’t dim her fire, however.“Frank?” She crossed the empty space, headed for the shapes beyond the boxing ring that looked like they might conceal a bedroll. “Frank! Goddamnit, where are you...”Behind a stack of crates, she didn’t find Frank, but she found a bed, surprisingly. A real, honest to goodness bed, a double, with a gray wool blanket tucked in with hospital corners.“You gonna make a habit of breaking and entering, Page?”Karen caught her breath as she whipped around. There he was, looking achingly, sickeningly good in his henley and jeans, his hair still wet and smelling of shampoo. So he did have a shower here? Focus, Karen .“No more than you do,” she retorted before she could think twice. “It was unlocked, you knew that, right? Listen, I need to say something. And before you ask, no I haven’t been drinking. I mean, I had some drinks earlier, but I’m not drunk. I don’t think I--I’m just...I came here because I’m done being embarrassed or--or whatever, fuck. I just need to say this, okay?”His eyes raked her up and down, from her heels to the skirt that showed more leg than usual to the low neck of the sparkly top Remy had convinced her to wear. She felt his eyes right where the loose line of the fabric revealed the dip and swell of her cleavage, just for a second, before he met her gaze again.“I ain’t gonna stop you.”His words said one thing and yet the heat between them in the room was so palpable Karen felt she would stumble on it if she tried to cross the room. Karen felt like she was going crazy. The heat in his eyes had to be more than her imagination. “No?”“No ma’am. Tell me what you gotta tell me.”The nickname caught her off guard. “Okay...the thing is...I wanted to apologize. For the other night. I think I was a little, uh, overwhelmed...seeing you again after so long. So much has happened. And you thought I was trying to thank you for saving me or something but that wasn’t really it at all. It’s not like, pity sex or whatever you want to call it.” She sighed. Was something shifting in his expression? It was hard to tell, and she was terrified this was going to go as poorly as it went last time, so she plunged on.“I shouldn’t have tried to get you to...ugh. It’s just...there were days when I drove myself crazy wondering where you were, and if you were okay. I used to have--oh God, you’re really going to think I’m insane now--” she laughed, and the hiccupy giggle in the middle of it made her realize there was an unspooling behind her words, a long thread of tension, there was just so much she had to tell him, so much beyond please don’t tell me I ruined this thing between us because of one rejected blowjob, “--but sometimes I guess I, oh God, okay. I talk to you.”“What?”If possible, Karen felt herself sinking further into the floor. “Hear me out...um...I mean I talk to you in my head. Like I tell you things. We have these little conversations. All the fucking time. When I have a crazy bad day, when I get nominated for something good at work, when I’m at the end of my rope, I...pretend I’m talking to you about it. And it’s the most comforting thing because you get me in a way no one else does, you know?”He nodded like maybe he did know. He nodded like he didn’t find it crazy at all. His eyes were soft in that darkness, watching her.Karen couldn’t stop speaking, though. The thread was unraveling the tension from her shoulders and it was pooling somewhere exactly south of there and a lot less easier to articulate. “But there’s something else. And this is killing me. I need to know something.”“Yeah, and what’s that?” His voice was rusty, dredged up rough and a shade away from a growl.“Is there even, like, a chance of this being a thing? Because every time I try to...uh, be with someone else, I can’t stop thinking about you the whole time. So I have to know if there’s a way we could ever...” Oh God, oh help. “If you and me…?”She trailed off. She’d gone too far . All her clever words, her smart arguments and persuasive ideas. Gone in two lemon drops and a whiskey neat and one ill-considered Uber ride to the dark side of her subconscious -- the part of her that begged, still, despite all warning signs to the contrary, and dared her to go further.There was that dangerous, flat glint in his eyes again as he stepped toward her. The soft Frank had retreated.“You. And me? Karen...” Oh God. She wanted to run away. To swallow her own words. He looked darkly amused, something in the tilt of his head and the way he moved. If she’d thought her earlier visit had been a simple mistake, surely this was her own personal apocalypse.Karen’s head swam, he was too close now, the scent of him filling her nose and before she could reconsider her footing there he was crowding her up against the chilly, pockmarked brick wall. It was like what she wanted but reflected through a funhouse mirror.She wouldn’t meet his eyes until he said it again, lower, with more urgency. “ Karen. ” She looked up, heart beating a tattoo under her skin.There was the hint of a satisfied smirk on his face as he swiftly crowded close enough to press against her body (warm, he was so warm) and he used her stumble to slot one muscled leg between her smooth thighs. With a gasp she clasped fistfuls of his shirt to steady herself against the wall. His face pressed close to the side of her neck, his breath hot and fast and his voice low and torn. “You come in here looking like that...you tell me all this shit and you think you’re gonna give me some kind of...apology?”She started to speak, to fix it, and he silenced her with one slow, sinful press into the hot center of her. Her mouth dropped open.If this was his way of sending her packing, it was a hell of a way to go. Her words turned into a whimper of pleasure that she tried to stifle, grasping for dignity, and then he caught it and made it worse .Frank looked down at her, perched on the fulcrum of his leg, like he wanted to do something terrible just then. He grasped her by the hips, sliding his hands around her until his hot palms spread flat on the back of her torso, and her traitorous blouse managed to push up so that he was mostly touching skin. He practically snarled as if it was too much, that skin. His rough fingers set her on fire.He held her, between his palms and pinned between his body and the wall, snarling at her scrap of a blouse and she had never felt so powerless and it was fucking glorious . Delirious, she tried to kiss him, and he only pulled back from her mouth, making her doubt herself for a moment. It was so hard to think. Karen’s breath, if it had ever been in her lungs, was caught forever in her throat. “Frank, you’re--mm--”“I’m what, huh?” He shifted his leg a little, unconcerned, as if he didn’t know (did he not?) what he was doing to her, pressing more and more into her with every minute adjustment. When she didn’t answer, couldn’t answer, he leaned in to listen, turning his ear to her mouth a little to catch the frayed sounds catching in her throat. His words were little plosives landing on her shoulder and the parts of her bared by the blouse; torture. “What’s that? What am I doing? Is there something you want to say?”She had no words, only her body that wanted to writhe against him. She did, unable to stop herself. “Uh huh, that’s what I thought.” He pulled her hands off the front of his shirt and held them back, lightly, not pinning her but not letting her touch him. And watching her struggle against it. Watching and drinking it in.He kept going. “I don’t want your damn apology. Never did. You thought I was turning you away when you came by before? You must be out of your goddamn mind.” His laugh was a dark, dry husk of disbelief. “Listen, you come walking in here looking like this tonight, telling me you been dreaming about me, telling me you can’t stop thinking about me, well there’s only one thing I want. I want this .” It came out on a hiss as he grasped under her legs to adjust her around him and then pressed his hard length right at her center, her legs splaying wide enough to make her skirt ride up. She could feel the air cooling where it touched her hot, wet skin.Karen almost sobbed with want. He pressed his forehead to hers for a second.“I want to be...right here.” His fingers teased the edge of her thong, and his forehead dropped to her shoulder to taste her skin, his groan vibrating through her collarbone when his fingers slicked through her wetness, gliding.She was done talking. A writhing mess, kissing him and pulling off his shirt with shaking hands, her pleas half-voiced and half-moaned, he carried her bodily to the bed and made quick work of her skirt and the rest of his clothes, too. He was a shadow amid shadows above her as they kissed, deep and liquid and slow and urgent by turns. Karen could not get enough of the scent of him at his neck, bit and sucked kisses down his arms and his torso, everywhere he would let her until he stopped her with another hard grind up into the hot, wet center of her.“We should have--ah!--done this earlier,” she gasped, undone by the perfect friction between them. His tongue and teeth teased her nipples, his hands roving and grasping handfuls of her flesh to pull her closer as if he thought she might float off at any second.His only reply was a wordless, steadying breath when she got her hand inside his boxers and stroked down the length of his cock to circle the velvety smooth skin at its head. “ Yes .” Frank’s mouth, wide in the dark for a moment, made her greedy for more.He captured her mouth with a bruising kiss, pulling the breath right out of her. Karen drowned in it, happily, her body singing alongside his. The strength of his body around and over hers, the rough skin of his hand ghosting over her bare neck infinitely slow, a torture in tandem with the worship of his hips.He didn’t want her hands on him as much as he wanted his hands on her, and he rolled her over like a wave. When his fingers split her open easy as parting water, they both stilled a moment, and he went slow at first, playing her right in his hand. And then it was not slow. Karen felt possessed. He was curling, pulling, holding her down with one hand and fucking her mercilessly with the other, to the point of no return. His hand at her jaw, holding her, his breath guttural with need as he pushed her higher and higher.Karen, brightness pulling her skin, the sin of those thick fingers inside her so deep , made a sound so sharp she tried to muffle it with her own hand before he yanked it away. “No.” Pushing, pushing, groaning to see her on the edge like this. “Say it.” Closer and closer, until there was nothing left. “ Say it. ”The cradle of his body held hers. She bent nearly double, the core of her contracted in ecstasy, breath gone, before she surfaced all at once, a gasp of a scream, “ Frank ,” and fell over the edge. Flying. He groaned and kept chanting yes, yes, yes , as the waves came and kept coming over her, as he drew it out of her one stroke at a time until she was sated, boneless, and falling against his warmth.Giddy. Karen could feel the small tremble in her knees that would have given her away if she had dared try to stand up at that moment. And the violent tremor in her soul that would have ruptured the entire world if she had dared try to leave the secure circle of Frank’s arms, the scent of his skin all around her now, his breath ruffling the hair by her ear.She felt herself floating in darkness; the bed might as well have been a raft set loose in oblivion. It was Frank next to her, and it was the best fucking feeling. It was everything, this moment.“Yeah, I think we got more ‘n a chance, you and me,” he said wryly, the amusement rippling through him so she couldn’t help laugh, too.Frank stroked one broad hand from the crown of her head down the tangle of hair on her shoulder. He dropped a kiss on the top of her head so soft and quiet she wasn’t even sure she’d heard it.She was greedy for him, for what their bodies could do together. She couldn’t think of life outside this dark oblivion, not just yet.His hand continued its slow stroke down her hair, leaving little sparks of fire in its wake, ripples of shivers and lightning down her skin. He seemed content, just then, with nothing more.She could live with that.