The city at 2:00 a.m. was a lover with secrets. Its streets hummed in blue and gold, half-lit and half-lost, while the buildings leaned in like they were listening to something she couldn't yet hear.
Lía stood outside the address scribbled on the black card, heart ticking like a slow metronome. A warehouse—stone and steel, converted, expensive. No signs. No names. Just a heavy door and a single brass intercom button.
She hesitated only a second before pressing it.
A click. The door unlatched with a mechanical sigh.
Inside: silence. A narrow hallway. Concrete walls lit by low, warm bulbs that flickered slightly—like candlelight that had forgotten how to burn.
She followed the corridor until it opened into a space that didn't make sense.
It was beautiful. That was the first lie.
A loft—but not a home. Not quite. Art lined the walls, some framed, some raw: charcoals of bodies blurred by shadow. Oil paintings of mouths and teeth and closed eyes. Suspended bulbs floated above like stars trapped in glass.
He was there.
At the center of it all. Shirt unbuttoned at the collar now, jacket off. Barefoot. Standing like he owned the night and had invited her into it as a courtesy.
"Lía," he said.
She blinked. "You know my name?"
"I saw your work," he said. "La Galería Roja. The exhibit with the lovers blurred in motion. It made me... curious."
"Curious enough to lure me here?"
He smiled. Not charming—dangerous. "Curiosity is hunger in disguise."
She didn't respond. Didn't need to. He crossed the room and poured two glasses of something dark. Held one out.
"Wine?" he said.
"Temptation?"
He nodded once. "Always."
She took it.
The wine was bold. So was his gaze.
"This space is yours?" she asked, walking slowly around the room. The floor was polished concrete. The walls still bore the bones of the original warehouse. A perfect contradiction—like him.
"I own it. I don't know if it's mine," he said, watching her like a wolf might watch a poem.
Lía set her glass down.
"I came because I was curious, too."
"About me?"
"No." She turned. "About what happens when two people pretend they're not playing a game."
He stepped closer. "And what happens?"
"We stop pretending."
His hand reached out—hovering just beside her cheek, but not touching. The air between them throbbed. Lía could smell the wine on his breath and something deeper—amber, skin, want.
"Tell me what you want," he said.
Lía didn't answer.
She stepped into him, eyes locked. Their lips a breath apart.
And then—finally—he kissed her.
Not soft. Not savage. Certain. Like he already knew how she tasted. Like he was claiming a memory before it even happened.
Her hands slid up into his hair. His fingers traced her spine. They moved together like they'd done it in a dream—urgent, slow, infinite.
They didn't speak again.
Not when he lifted her onto the velvet couch beneath the largest painting.
Not when he undressed her like she was something to be unwrapped, not understood.
Not even when she whispered his name for the first time—
"Marco."
Because names were real.
And tonight was not...