The men behind us are snickering. My mind, which is already transitioning out of “oh my God that was so hot” to “what the hell were you thinking?” is racing with possibilities. What could they be laughing about? I try to casually run my hand down my thighs and the back of my dress without drawing notice. I would be mortified if I had his cum somewhere visible on my dress or my legs and didn’t realize.

Leo takes one long stride until he’s standing directly in front of the men and dwarfing them with his tall, broad frame. “Something funny?” he asks in a voice like cold steel.

An icy fist clutches my stomach. The mood in the cramped elevator is electric with the potential of violence, and I just want to be out. I want to be somewhere I can breathe.

“Yeah,” says one of the guys. “Your hooker looks like she just went nine rounds with half the hotel.”

My throat tightens. I bring my hands up to straighten my hair, which I now feel is a tangled mess. So much hot blood rushes to my cheeks that I think I might spontaneously combust. It’s like being in one of those nightmares where you realize you’re naked in the middle of class, except I can’t just wake up to escape this.

Everything happens so fast my brain can barely process it. Leo is gripping the guy who just spoke by the shirt, pinning him to the wall with so much force that the man’s feet are several inches off the ground. The other guy starts yanking at Leo’s arms to free his friend, but Leo cracks him across the jaw with a punch and then aims one at the guy he has pinned.

“Stop!” I cry out.

Leo turns to look at me with wild fury in his eyes. I don’t even recognize him. His grip tightens on the man he holds while the other one groans on the ground, nursing a swelling lip.

“Let him go, it’s not worth it,” I say.

Leo turns back to the man and pulls his fist back again. At the same time, the door dings for my floor.

I take one more look at Leo and know I need to leave. I don’t know this man. He’s dangerous. Violent, even. I let the wrong parts of my body do the thinking and I made a mistake, but it’s not too late to fix it and get away. I press the close doors button before running out of the elevator. He’s so consumed by his rage he doesn’t even notice I’ve left in time to stop me.

I run to my mom’s room, feeling strange without my panties and even stranger when I realize they are probably still lying torn on the floor of the elevator.

I open the door as quietly as I can and step inside, breathing heavily.

I was hoping my mom would be asleep, but she’s watching me with a half-cocked eyebrow. I notice with relief that her medicine has already been delivered and it looks like she took it as well.

“What’d you do, get laid?” she asks. Her eyes narrowed as she grins. “That’s exactly what you did, isn’t it?”

“Mom,” I say, holding up my hands. “This is not a conversation I’m going to have with you. I love you, but just no.”

She grins knowingly. “Doesn’t really matter what you say, sweetie, the state of your hair says enough. You look like you just got mauled by a bear.”

Heat burns my cheeks, but I try not to let it show. I remind myself that it’s better to have my mom around to embarrass the crap out of me than the alternative. “Yeah, well, it wasn’t a bear I ever want to run into again.”

“No?” she asks. She smiles in a way that tells me she’s about to gross me out again, so I brace myself as much as I can. “If a man left me looking like that, I’d be trying everything I could to run into him again.”

“Mom!” I say, unable to stop from grinning at least a little. My heart's still pounding from everything that just happened and I can still feel the dull ache in my pussy from how fully he filled me. Having this conversation with my mom makes the situation even more surreal. “What would daddy think if he heard you talking like that?”

“Maybe your daddy was that man.” The way she wiggles her eyebrows at me makes me want to hurl and say “aww” at the same time.

I sink down, letting my head rest against the wall. “Mom,” I say after a little time has passed. “Am I living a boring life?”

I expect a quick, sarcastic remark, but instead she watches me for a while, considering. “I don’t want this to come out wrong, sweetie,” she says finally in an uncharacteristically careful tone. “But let me tell you something, and I want you to remember this. It’s so easy to fall into a routine, Lysa. So goddamn easy. One morning you wake up a fresh young twenty something and you feel like you’ve got all the time in the world, like you’ll start getting to all those things you’ve wanted to do forever as soon as… And that’s how it happens. Your life slips away one “as soon as” at a time. As soon as I graduate. As soon as I have a real job. As soon as I have more money.

“You wanna know the secret, sweetie? Opportunity has an expiration date. It won’t always be there waiting for that perfect time. Sometimes you’ve got to grab it at the worst time you can imagine. Sometimes it’ll seem like you can’t possibly do it but that’s exactly when it’s the most important thing in the world to do.”

Her words wash over me in a way her wisdom often does. I feel them slip into my mind somewhere, but it’s like a filter stops them from reaching all the way through. I tell myself that I’ll take the time to digest them somewhere down the road when things are less crazy, and even though I realize I’m already turning her advice into an “as soon as”, I can't seem to stop myself.

“That makes a lot of sense,” I say distantly. “Thank you, mom.”

She grunts, letting her usual cranky demeanor take over once again. “Don’t thank me, because you’re just going to go on doing what you were going to do anyway. You’ll see how it is when you’re older. Nothing to do but watch the young ones make the same mistakes you did because they never listen.”

“I’ll try mom, I really will,” I say, even though I know I’ve already sidelined her advice as something to digest later, it’s not a complete lie. “But I need to get going. I have a class tonight and I’m going to be late if I don’t leave soon.”

“Not without giving me my goddamn hug and kiss, you’re not.”

I lean in to squeeze her and give her a peck on the cheek. My mom may be a hardass, but she never lets me go for more than a few hours without a hug and kiss.

It’s only when I’m on the bus back to campus that I fully start to comprehend everything that happened. I replay the way Leo walked up to me in the lobby with so much confidence it was practically dripping from him. The arrogant way he just knew I’d go along with whatever he was planning, and the almost frightening way he was able to command my mind and body with nothing but a few touches and whispered words.

Being with him might have been a thrill like nothing I’ve ever experienced, but I’m sure jumping out of an airplane without a parachute would also be a thrill, all the way up until you hit the ground. There’s no room in my life for a man like Leo. I can’t afford that kind of entanglement. I’ve got too much on my plate already between my mom, work, and school. There’s just no way.

My stomach turns a little when I remember how I let him fuck me and cum inside me without a condom. Reality felt like a distant memory when I was with him, and the thought of safe-sex never even crossed my mind. It’s amazing what a flood of hormones and horniess can do to a normally functional brain. Now I’ll have to schedule an appointment with my doctor to get tested.

With every passing moment, I’m more and more certain that what I did was a mistake, especially when I think back to the way he jumped all over those guys in the elevator. I caught a glimpse of something dark inside Leo, and I’ve got enough problems without inviting a man with demons like that into my life. Even if the sex was out of this world.

My traitorous body shivers with a chill just at the memory of him. If I focus hard enough, I can still feel the places he kissed me like warm bursts of air tickling my skin. When I close my eyes I can remember how unbelievably good he smelled, like expensive cologne mixed with something more basic and masculine just beneath.

The most worrisome part is that Leo apparently owns the hotel my mom is staying in… If he wants to find me it’ll be ridiculously easy. A little thrill of excitement pulses through me at the thought of Leo coming after me, of him not wanting to let me get away. I shake myself off that train of thought. It’s just my stupid hormones reacting to the best sex of my life. If I’m lucky, Leo Carlyle will never come looking for me, and as soon as I take a shower, I’ll be able to wash him out of my life for good.

My mind wanders back to the fact that we didn’t use protection and another thought comes to the forefront. Pregnancy. But that possibility… It’s too much to consider, too much to even entertain the idea. I read an article about the dangers of the morning after pill once, and how if it fails to work, there can be terrible side effects for the baby. That’s a risk that I could never, in good conscious, take. For better or worse, if I’m pregnant, then I’m pregnant. After everything I’ve endured in my life, I have to believe the universe wouldn’t be cruel enough to play a joke like that on me.