The Sterling Building was forty floors of glass and steel, and I worked on the 32nd as a junior architect. My stepsister, Lane, worked on the 17th as a corporate lawyer. We’d been avoiding each other since the lake house—since the night three months ago when we’d shared a bottle of whiskey and she’d kissed me on the dock, her hands in my wet hair, her mouth tasting like summer and sin.
We hadn’t spoken since. We’d taken different elevators, eaten lunch at different times, pretended the other didn’t exist in the building where we both spent sixty hours a week.
Until tonight.
I’d stayed late to finish a presentation. Lane had stayed late for a deposition. We’d both reached the bank of elevators at 11:47 PM, both exhausted, both avoiding eye contact as we stepped into Car 7.
The doors closed. The car rose. And at the exact moment we passed between 14 and 15, the lights flickered and died.
The emergency light kicked on—a harsh red glow that made Lane’s blonde hair look like fire and my navy suit look like blood. The car stopped with a jolt that made me grab the railing. And the intercom crackled to life.
“Attention passengers, this is building security. We’ve experienced a city-wide grid failure. Please remain calm. Emergency services have been notified. Estimated wait time: 45 minutes.”
Forty-five minutes. In a box. Six feet wide. With Lane.
“I can’t breathe in small spaces,” I said, sliding down the wall until I was sitting on the floor. My chest was heaving, my vision was narrowing, and the walls were definitely closing in. “The walls are closing in.”
Lane didn’t speak. She just knelt beside me, her black skirt riding up her thighs, her white blouse unbuttoned one button too many from a long day in court. She moved closer. Cupped my face. Pressed her forehead against mine.
“The camera is still on,” I whispered, looking up at the corner where the green light blinked steadily. “They can see us. Security is watching.”
Lane looked up at the camera. Held my gaze. And smiled—a slow, dangerous expression that said she didn’t care who was watching, who was judging, who was recording this moment for some bored security guard’s entertainment.
“Then let them watch,” she whispered.
She kissed me.
It wasn’t gentle. It was the accumulation of three months of avoidance, three months of elevator rides where we’d stood three feet apart and pretended we didn’t remember the dock, three months of wanting and waiting and hating each other for the distance we’d created.
Her hand slid from my cheek to my throat, her thumb pressing against my pulse point, feeling how fast my heart was racing. Her other hand found the buttons of my blouse, undoing them with a precision that spoke of every fantasy she’d had during those late nights in her office.
“Lane,” I gasped against her mouth. “The camera—”
“Fuck the camera,” she whispered. Her hand slid inside my blouse, finding my breast, my nipple, pinching hard enough to make me cry out. The sound echoed in the metal box, bouncing off the walls, traveling through the intercom to whoever was listening.
She pushed me back against the elevator wall. The metal was cold through my thin blouse, a shocking contrast to the heat of her body pressed against mine. Her knee slid between my legs, pressing upward, finding the place where my skirt was already riding up.
The intercom crackled.
“Hello? Car 7? This is security. We can see you’re both conscious. Do you need medical assistance?”
Lane didn’t stop. She just pressed harder, her fingers sliding under my skirt, finding the edge of my stockings, the lace of my underwear. She reached up and pressed the talk button on the intercom panel, her other hand still inside my skirt.
“We’re fine,” she said, her voice perfectly calm, completely at odds with the fingers that were currently sliding inside me. “Just working through some family issues. We’ll let you know if we need anything.”
“Copy that. Stay calm.”
She released the button. Looked at me. And pressed her fingers deeper.
“Now,” she whispered, “where were we?”
She made me come against the elevator wall. Her fingers inside me, her thumb on my clit, her mouth swallowing every sound I tried to make. The red emergency light turned everything into shadows and highlights—her face, dark with desire; my hands, gripping her shoulders; the camera’s green light, blinking like a heartbeat.
When I came, it was with her name breaking from my lips and echoing in the metal box, my body shaking, my back arching off the cold wall. She held me through it, her fingers still moving, drawing out every aftershock until I was limp and gasping and completely ruined.
After, she fixed my buttons. Smoothed my skirt. Sat back on her heels and looked at me with an expression that was part triumph, part hunger, part the exact moment when avoidance becomes obsession.
“Thirty-two floors,” she said. “And I had to wait for a power outage to touch you again.”
The lights came back at 12:34 AM. The car jerked, rose, and opened on the lobby. The security guard was standing there, a young man in his twenties who looked at us with an expression that said he’d definitely been watching.
“Everything okay, ladies?” he asked, his voice slightly strangled.
“Perfect,” Lane said, stepping out of the car with her blazer buttoned and her hair perfect. “The elevator service is excellent.”
I followed her, my legs still shaking, my underwear still damp, my heart still hammering. She stopped at the revolving doors, turned back, and held out her hand.
“Your place or mine?” she asked.
I took her hand. “Yours. The elevator in my building has cameras too.”
We didn’t leave her apartment for the entire weekend. The power stayed on. But Lane kept the lights off, saying she liked the shadows better. And every time she touched me, I heard the intercom crackle in my memory, and I came harder.
