Read an Excerpt
Chapter 1: Breathe 1 Breathe
THE CUT WAS QUIET, ALMOST silent. If Carmen had meant to stab something thin and soft, she would’ve held it up and run it through with steel, leaving nothing but air on the other side to absorb the point.
But she’d only stabbed anything at all because she was spacing out at her desk. The glow of her work monitor must’ve messed her up on some subliminal level, and she’d checked out of her brain hard enough to drive her seldom-used letter opener through her black mousepad. Only the steel clacking against the desk warned her anything had happened.
She nudged the mouse away and lifted the thin square of fabric and rubber, dangling it in front of her eyes. A small round hole let in the blue monitor light, as if the mousepad were a one-eyed mask.
Bad girl, she told herself.
She studied the letter opener—could a dull edge become a murder weapon? Of course. It was part of this dull office, a dozing animal with soulless white walls and piercing fluorescent lights, and that overwhelming dullness had to be a murder weapon, too, killing Carmen with a tedious blade. Or worse, smoothing out her personality and peeling away her features until it could render her a faceless peon.
She touched her cheek, thinking of tender fingers, and then checked the time. Five minutes to go. Almost end of day.
Foot tapping, blood teeming, thinking about what would happen later, a quickness in her heart—how was she supposed to concentrate with this kind of pressure and anticipation?
It’s nerves, she thought. Nothing worse.
When she checked the time again, it was three minutes to six. She couldn’t take the waiting anymore and began packing up her bag, logging out of her data-entry files, bounding out of her chair with a barked goodbye to her manager, Liza, before zipping away from the cubicles, out the door, and into the city.
September heat thickened the air across Queens. She was having enough trouble keeping her breath steady, but the walk to the nearest station to take the 7 was mercifully short. Her hands broke from her bag to hold her phone over the reader, and then she pressed through the turnstile toward the next westward train.
There, easily done. She was just one more person trying to get home.
And yet, a sense of separation haunted her through the ride. No one tried for the empty seats beside her at the few stops before her transfer. Not one person approached to ask for change at the Queensboro Plaza platform where she stood waiting for her connecting train. As if every commuter and wanderer were smelling death on her.
They couldn’t understand. There might be a sense of dying ahead, but on the other side, there was life.
A yellow N train screeched to a halt alongside the platform and poured out fresh commuters. Carmen squeezed aboard and stood by the door, looking out its west-facing windows.
The rail line toward Ditmars ran above the streets, sweeping past graffitied brick and flat rooftops. Beyond those, the windows offered a glimpse across the East River to the Manhattan skyline, its buildings rising in a jagged series of peaks as if the sky were grinning with a concrete underbite. Carmen thought of it scooping up the rest of the city. Bad omens lay everywhere.
She clutched her bag tight to her chest and tried to take slow breaths. There were only a few stops between Queensboro and her own, but each one felt like pumping the brakes on her heart, squeezing out another dose of adrenaline.
Her hands trembled by the time the train reached the 30th Avenue station. She hurried onto the platform, down the steps, and headed east, crossing a handful of streets and north a couple blocks. The storefronts and home windows seemed to lean toward her, even when she reached her apartment building, the brown brick becoming its eyes, watching, waiting. Every inch of Queens was vibrating.
Or maybe that was her. Nervous, excited, worried, scared. It could all go right for a change. It could all be terrible.
Don’t be terrible, she told herself, as if that were in her control. Sometimes it felt like it should be. Shouldn’t she know enough not to fuck up her life?
But control wasn’t a concept she’d ever grasped. If she could take charge in a practical way, she would have done so already.
She yanked open the heavy door and hurried inside, past mailboxes, up the stairwell. The second floor looked darker today, but she barely caught any of it in her shaky rush toward her apartment. In pulling out her keys. Unlocking and opening the door. Letting it shut.
None of these features or sensations were as real as the feeling of a firm cylinder jamming against the back of her head. Her bag dropped to one side. She swallowed hard, mouth gone dry, and raised her hands, could practically imagine the pistol digging into her skull.
“Not smart, coming back here after what you pulled,” a voice rich as caramel said, her tone lethal. “Not smart at all.”
Minutes passed, too slow and yet too fast. Carmen was nude now, her button-up and slacks and everything else lying on the floor several feet away. Sweat made her bare skin stick where it touched this wooden chair. Her heart beat a gallop through her chest, but when she tried raising a hand to feel it through her sternum, her right wrist snagged on a leather cuff binding it to one arm of the chair. Another held her left wrist in place, and similar cuffs bound her ankles to the chair’s legs.
A heat billowed behind her—Blanca, her hand stroking Carmen’s short hair. Blanca, who’d restrained her.
Blanca, ready to end this.
“I can tell you things,” Carmen said, mouth still dry. “Secrets.”
“It’s too late for that,” Blanca said, almost doting. “Much too late.”
Hazel eyes reflected in Carmen’s vision for a blink, drifting dark circles like twin eclipses, before cloudy plastic wrenched against her face. It flattened across her brow, pressed down the tip of her pointy nose, and squeezed her strong chin, smothering all reflections in a whitish fog of exhalation.
Blanca tucked one arm over the rim of the stiff two-gallon freezer bag, sealing it to Carmen’s throat. Her other hand slid up Carmen’s head and laid a gentle hand on top. She kissed the outer plastic, her lower lip’s two studs pressing cold to Carmen’s temple while Carmen sucked in a breath that wouldn’t come.
“I thought we had something special,” Blanca said. “But you’ve fucked me over for the last time.”
Seconds passed. Maybe a breathless minute. Carmen couldn’t say how much time slid by before she began to fight. Couldn’t see a clock. Couldn’t open her mouth with Blanca gripping the bag beneath her jaw.
Blanca leaned close and kissed the plastic again. “And now, you can die for me.” Her voice dropped to a whisper. “Die slowly, my love.”
Carmen thrashed to one side, her naked legs rising slightly, but the restraints held firm. Her thighs thumped up and down against the chair, neck catching with Blanca’s grip, and an inner fist tensed between her thighs.
No escape. Trapped in delicious suffocation and its ecstatic thrill.
Blanca unstuck the bag from Carmen’s neck, only long enough for a breath, and then hugged it to her again. Another terrifying, wonderful jolt rocked her body, and the tremble of Blanca’s restrained laughter quaked into the chair. Controlling herself, keeping in character, yet overjoyed with Carmen’s excitement.
Expectant over it.
A nervous pressure seized inside Carmen’s chest.
Something wasn’t right. Sweat dotted her skin, and a dampness pooled within the dark hair between her thighs, as certain as the condensation within the plastic bag, and a vivacious tingling lit her nerves down to her fingertips and toes.
These were neutral facts of no interest. Her body was ready to explode with asphyxiation-driven arousal, but her mind had eased to the stillness of an untouched pond, brightened with anticipation and shadowed by apathy and looming disappointment.
Why didn’t she care? Blanca was doing everything right, even breathing against Carmen’s ear to make her jealous for stolen air, but an indifferent darkness fogged her head. She should’ve been craving Blanca’s touch by now. Lips, fingers, tongue, anything.
Ecstasy might come if she could hold out until death’s precipice—
Carmen pincered her left thumb and middle fingertip, and then she snapped her fingers, the nonverbal safeword.
Blanca immediately unlatched from Carmen’s head and throat, tearing the plastic away and giving space for Carmen to suck in the cool apartment air.
“That was fast,” Blanca said. “You all right? Can you hear me?”
Carmen blinked hard, exhaled harder, and looked up, where the ceiling light cast a golden aura around a broad silhouette. The fog cleared at each blink until the silhouette became Blanca.
One dark eye sparkled; the other hid beneath draping coils of black hair. She was gorgeously fat and wore mocha-colored slacks and a same-colored suit jacket with no undershirt, exposing her bare fawn-brown sternum. The outfit suited her role of vengeful mobster in this scenario, icing out her snitching ex-lover, but something about her radiated the tragic beauty of a femme fatale. Maybe a switch-up would help. Carmen could be the mobster, murdered by the one woman she thought she could trust.
Except this beauty hadn’t grown from their game. That was all Blanca. Carmen should have not only been awed by her presence but ravenous with desire.
Blanca creased her forehead in concern and cupped a tender palm to Carmen’s cheek. “Pet?”
“I’m broken,” Carmen said, breath steadying. “Disconnected. It isn’t working.”
Blanca slid a playful finger through Carmen’s dark lower curls. “Feels like it’s working.”
“Not up here.”
Carmen tried tapping her head, but the leather cuff again caught her wrist. Her brain hadn’t come all the way back yet, and the surprise at forgetting she was bound almost brought momentary excitement.
Almost.
“I warned you this was a bad idea,” Blanca said, unlatching the wrist restraints. “Plastic is dangerous. You should’ve let me smother you with my belly or sit on your face.”
Carmen was still catching her breath and couldn’t explain how, much as she loved either suggestion, trying it would’ve broken the suspension of disbelief. No mobster would kill an ex-lover in that fashion.
Blanca lowered to one knee to free Carmen’s ankles. “Maybe it’s a bad idea all around. Safety first, remember? Tomorrow we could try—what was that one you liked?” She waved a hand in front of her face, snatching for the word she wanted. “The mask. It’s been a minute since.”
“No mask,” Carmen said.
“Or the mermaid, caught by the sailor?” Blanca asked. “I could try a reverse Munter hitch down your legs.”
Carmen nodded to spare Blanca’s optimism, but tomorrow wouldn’t improve anything. Same as the other nights they’d tried to heal whatever had gone wrong in Carmen’s head.
That word again stroked the tip of her tongue—broken—and she couldn’t shake it away as Blanca helped her stand up and draped a silky turquoise robe around her. It belonged to Blanca, but her belongings and scent brought relief, the way Blanca prioritized Carmen’s aftercare even when they’d cut their rough scenario short.
She led them to the living room’s lavender couch. “Cuddle and a movie?”
Another nod, and Carmen let herself be set down. Sometimes, like the moment Blanca returned to the couch with the TV remote, Carmen caught a look of coldness in her eyes. Faraway. Haunted. Uncertain if she was relieved, thinking breathplay was a bad idea, or disappointed, and why wouldn’t she be? She had put a lot of thought and work into this, ensuring safety so that Carmen could have her little death fantasy without worry. Blanca kept control; Blanca would make it okay. Love was a muscle, and she kept it toned. She wanted to see Carmen happy despite her own reservations.
All that, only for Carmen to pull the plug. As if the threat of asphyxiation couldn’t offer a powerful enough high, staring down death’s cliff. For Blanca to agree at all hinted how desperate she’d become to shatter this carapace around Carmen’s enthusiasm and joy.
“Will you lie on me?” Carmen asked. It came out with the meekness of asking, Do you still love me?
Blanca flashed a faint smile. “For a little, before my shift.”
And Carmen had to hope that was the answer to the spoken question and not the unspoken one.
Maybe she was causing her own trouble. She had been stewing in her juices through work, possibly over-anticipated. Her excitement might have bled dry across the day. Maybe they needed to be more spontaneous? Except Blanca wouldn’t like that. It wasn’t safe.
Carmen stretched across the couch, waiting. Blanca slid out of her suit, dressed herself in another robe, and reclined over Carmen’s lithe frame, her comforting softness reshaping around Carmen like a weighted blanket made of girlfriend. The pressure slowed Carmen’s breathing, not in the game’s elusive sensuality, but a calm she absorbed from Blanca into her muscles and mind. Maybe seeing that despondent look in Blanca’s eyes was Carmen’s projection, nothing more.
Or maybe she echoed Carmen’s worry, and they were feeding each other’s anxieties in a forever loop like an orbiting meteor building momentum before one planet could slingshot it into another.
Carmen couldn’t face that extinction event. She needed to figure out what was wrong with her enthusiasm and remind it how much she wanted Blanca, wholly and utterly and in every possible way like she deserved, and soon.
Before their conjoined anxiety dragged them out of their game, their world, and tore their hearts to shreds.
