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HARD CUT—BACK TO STUDIO
Steve is sitting at the anchor desk. He is white as paper. His mouth is open. For four full seconds, he says nothing. Behind him, the LIVE banner still reads BANCROFT AVENUE. The audio from the field is still bleeding through—faint screaming, that howling, something tearing—
PRODUCER’S VOICE, off-camera, frantic:
“CUT THE FEED. CUT THE FEED!”
The field audio goes dead.
STEVE: Hoarse
“…We…we appear to have lost contact with our correspondent Linda Voss. We are…we will try to…”
He looks down. His hands are shaking on the desk.
“…If you are watching this, stay in your homes. Lock your doors. Do not go outside for any reason.”
He looks back up, right into the lens.
“God help us.”
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GRAPHIC: RED BANNER — “PLEASE STAND BY”
The emergency broadcast tone begins.
Screen holds for eleven seconds.
Signal lost.
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Two
Sloane
Iwoke to rain pounding against the glass.
Gray light bled through the blinds. Peter was already hard against my hip, his breath hot on my neck, one hand pushing my thighs apart before I was fully conscious. No preamble, no tenderness—the unmistakable, persistent pressure of him entering as I remained half-asleep, still cozy and languid.
“Fuck,” he grunted, his voice rough with sleep. “You’re tight this morning.” He pulled back out, pulled my wrists above my head and to my feet with one hand, and walked me backward to the window. The cold glass hit my shoulders. Outside, rain streaked down the pane in long rivulets. Inside, my skin prickled—from the sudden stretch of him, from the loneliness of being held against something cold while someone uses the wordtightlike a compliment.
He didn’t ease in. His hips surged forward in one brutal thrust that forced the air from my lungs, my shoulder scraping the glass. I shifted, trying to find a better angle, something that worked for both of us. He gripped my waist and yanked me up instead, fingers digging into my flesh with a possessiveness that had nothing to do with desire and everything to do with convenience. My legs hooked around him instinctively. He used the leverage.
The wet slap of skin. The rain. His breathing, loud and purposeful and entirely self-directed—his own little performance.
“Take it,” he growled against my ear, teeth catching my lobe. “Fucking take it.”
I did. I always did.
My nails found his shoulders, dragging red lines he’d cover with a shirt in twenty minutes. He liked the sting—likedjustenough resistance to make it appear to be mutual. So I gave it to him. I clenched around him and tried to chase what I needed, tried to angle toward the place he sometimes found when he was paying attention.
Today he wasn’t paying attention.
The glass fogged. Pleasure coiled tight and low and simply stalled—the pace too erratic, the angle all wrong, everything geared to his finish line and not mine. I was swollen, throbbing, teetering at the edge.