Darker Shades of Elise novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: Last Time
Felicity ends her affair with Rafe, and he shows her the hidden-camera footage and names his price; she takes the memory card, but he says it is the one copy he doesn't keep.
Rafe had me against the brick wall of his loft, my dress hiked to my waist and my legs around him.
It was Thursday, two in the afternoon, and the radiators clanked like they always did.
"Say it again," he said against my neck.
"Harder," I said.
He gave me what I asked for.
His cock drove into me, thick and slow and certain, and my back scraped the rough brick with every stroke.
I grabbed his hair and pulled his mouth to mine.
He tasted like coffee and cigarettes, and I hated how much I wanted him.
"You're so wet for me," he said.
"Shut up and fuck me," I said, and he laughed into my mouth and did it faster.
My nails dug into his shoulders.
The heat climbed from my belly down my thighs, and I heard myself make a sound I never made at home.
He reached between us and rubbed my clit with his thumb, hard circles, exactly where I needed him.
"Come for me, Felicity."
I came with my head thrown back against the wall, shaking, clenching around him until he swore.
He followed a few strokes later, groaning, his fingers bruising my hips.
For a minute we just breathed.
Then he set me on my feet, and my knees almost gave out.
I smoothed my dress down and found my shoes by the couch.
Three months of Thursdays, and I knew every inch of this room.
The brass bed, the tall windows, the white smoke detector above it that never beeped.
I looked at my wedding ring on the nightstand, where I always left it.
I picked it up and slid it back on.
"What are you doing?" Rafe asked from the bed, lighting a cigarette.
"Leaving," I said.
"You just got here."
"I mean I'm done, Rafe."
"I won't be coming back," I said.
He didn't look surprised, and that was the first thing that scared me.
He blew smoke at the ceiling.
"Because of your husband?"
"Because I'm thirty-three, and I'm cheating on a man who hasn't touched me since I lost the baby, and I'm not proud of it."
"You weren't ashamed ten minutes ago."
"I'm ashamed now."
I picked up my bag.
Rafe swung his feet to the floor and opened the laptop on the bed.
"Before you go, you should see something," he said.
I didn't want to look.
I looked.
On the screen was a bed.
His brass bed, seen from above, and a woman on it with her legs spread and her head thrown back.
Auburn hair, a mole under her left breast, my wedding ring on the hand that clutched the sheet.
It took me a second to understand it was me.
The camera was angled down from the ceiling.
I looked up at the white smoke detector.
"There are twelve of them," Rafe said, almost kindly.
"Twelve Thursdays, and your face is very clear in all of them."
The floor tilted.
"You filmed me."
"I film everyone I care about," he said.
"It's a gift to remember them by."
"Delete it."
"No."
He said it gently.
"Here's what's going to happen," he said.
"You'll bring me forty thousand dollars in cash by Friday."
"And you'll keep coming on Thursdays, because I like you, Felicity."
My mouth had gone dry.
"Or what?"
"Or Mitchell gets a very good evening of television," Rafe said.
"So does his mother, and so does the buyer's board, from what I hear."
I stood there and did the math on my life.
Then I did something Rafe didn't expect.
I climbed onto the bed, reached the smoke detector in two steps, and twisted the cover off with my nails.
The little lens looked back at me.
I pulled out the memory card and shut it in my fist.
"That's the card," I said.
Rafe laughed, a real laugh, and went back to his cigarette.
"Take it," he said.
"It's the one copy I don't keep."
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