Trouble Takes Its TIme - Temptress S01E05 [audio book]

spoken

They warned me about her in the casual way people warn you about a fire: smiling, already certain you will lean closer.

"Don't mistake an invitation for safety," someone said.

I told them I wasn't looking for safety.

The street outside her building was wet with late rain, every window black except hers. Second floor. Two candles in the glass. One near the window, one farther back—as if she had expected company, but had not bothered to decide whose.

The front door was not open.

Not really.

It was left just loose enough that the latch had not caught.

That was worse.

I stood there with my hand near the handle, thinking of every reasonable thing I could do instead. Go home. Call someone. Laugh about it tomorrow. Become the sort of man who recognizes trouble before it learns his name.

Then her voice came from inside.

Not loud. Not calling out.

Just saying, "You took your time."

The door gave way beneath my hand.

Her apartment smelled of smoke, something dark and sweet in a glass, and rain brought in on my coat. She sat on the edge of a velvet chair with one knee crossed over the other, watching me like she had not been waiting at all. Like I was simply the next page in a book she had already read.

"You know what they say about you?" I asked.

"I imagine they say many things." She tipped her glass. "Which one brought you here?"

I should have answered with a joke. I had one ready. Something cheap and sharp enough to put distance between us.

Instead I looked at the second glass on the low table.

"You expected me."

"No," she said, and smiled as though the distinction mattered. "I prepared for the possibility."

That was how she did it. She never reached. Never asked. She left space around every sentence and let you furnish it with your own worst ideas.

I sat opposite her. Took the second glass. The drink was warm, bitter, almost floral. She watched me taste it, and I hated how much I wanted her to approve.

"You're very quiet," she said.

"I'm trying to work out whether I'm being manipulated."

"And?"

"And I think I'd know if I was."

Her laugh was soft. Not cruel. That would have been easier.

"You came through an unlocked door," she said. "You saw the candles. You drank from the glass meant for you. If you need me to be the villain, I can wear it beautifully. But don't hand me the whole story."

Outside, rain tapped once against the glass and stopped.

I understood then: she had not trapped me. Not exactly. The trap was that she made every choice feel like mine—because it was.

She leaned nearer, close enough for the air to change between us.

"Do you want to leave?" she asked.

There it was. The final clean exit.

I looked at the door behind me. Then at her, at the candlelight moving over her face, at the second glass slowly emptying in my hand.

"No," I said.

Her smile returned, slow and certain.

"I know," she whispered.

And somewhere inside the apartment, another door clicked shut.