"You're pacing. I can literally hear you pacing over the phone, Eb."
Ebony Baptiste froze in front of her bedroom mirror, staring at her reflection. She adjusted the thin, plunging strap of her emerald silk dress for the fifth time. "I'm not pacing. I'm just… reconsidering the dress. It's a lot."
"It's perfect, leave it," Ashley's voice barked through the speakerphone. The chaotic, clattering background noise of her downtown restaurant's dinner rush bled through the audio. "But seriously, why are you hyperventilating? It's just a date."
"I don't know," Ebony admitted, rubbing her bare arms to chase away a sudden chill. The massive room felt like a botanical quarantine, rare orchids leaning hungrily toward custom UV lamps in the corners. "My stomach is just… in knots. My brain keeps telling me to lock the front door and hide under the bed."
"That's just because you spend ninety percent of your life in a basement lab talking to plant cells," Ashley said smoothly. "You aren't used to human men. Just go. But share your live location with me right now. And if he gives you weird chatbot energy, leave immediately."
Ebony blew out a heavy breath, a reluctant smile finally breaking the tension in her jaw. "He's not weird, Ash. He's nice. We bumped into each other in the library three weeks ago. I dropped a lukewarm oat milk latte all over the carpet, and he actually got down on his knees to help me clean up my botanical journals. He ruined his leather loafers and didn't even care."
"Ted Bundy was nice, Ebony," Ashley deadpanned. "Send me the location."
"Sending it now," Ebony laughed, grabbing her leather clutch. "Don't be crazy tonight. I'll see you at midnight."
"I'm a business owner in NOLA. I'm legally required to be a little crazy," Ashley shot back. "Call me if he sucks."
New Orleans in late August didn't just glow; it festered. The French Quarter breathed a wet, suffocating heat into the dark air as Ebony walked into L'Oubli.
It was the kind of place that felt incredibly expensive without needing to yell about it. Subwoofer-low jazz thrummed in the floorboards. Heavy velvet curtains drank the oxygen out of the room.
James Knighton stood up the moment he saw her approaching the secluded corner table.
"Ebony," he said. His voice dropped a full octave.
His eyes didn't meet her face. They dragged shamelessly down the deep plunge of her neckline, lingering heavily before slowly trailing down to the curve of her hips. He licked his bottom lip before finally bothering to look her in the eye.
"You look… wow. Just amazing."
Ebony's cheeks flushed. Her stomach did that uncomfortable, twisting flutter again. "Thank you. You look really nice too, James."
He moved gracefully behind her to pull out her heavy wooden chair, but as she sat down, he didn't step back. He lingered right behind her bare shoulders, standing way too close.
He leaned down, his face practically buried in her hair, inhaling deeply. "You smell fucking delicious."
His knuckles brushed against her bare shoulder blade. He traced the edge of her silk dress, missing the faint, raised rose birthmark on her back by mere inches.
Every tiny hair on her arms stood straight up. Ebony forced a tight laugh and immediately slid her chair forward, breaking the physical contact.
"So," she said, desperately trying to find her footing as he rounded the table to sit. "How did you even manage to get a reservation here tonight? My department chair has been on the waitlist for six months."
James smiled. It was a flawless, charming smile, but it entirely failed to reach his eyes, which were currently fixed firmly on her cleavage.
"Connections," he said lightly. "I called them earlier today."
"Earlier today?" Ebony blinked, genuinely thrown. "James, people book this place like they're trying to secure a commercial mortgage."
He chuckled, reaching across the table to cover her hand with his. His palm was hot and slightly damp. "I wanted to make sure I treated you right. A girl who looks like you deserves the best table in the city."
Red flag, a tiny voice whispered in her head.
Ebony gently pulled her hand back, pretending to reach for her water glass.
When the wine arrived, she desperately tried to force the conversation into safer, intellectual territory. "So, the antiviral compounds in the root structures actually—"
She stopped talking. He wasn't listening. He was just tracking the movement of her lips with a heavy, unsettling lust.
"It's funny, though," Ebony pivoted, deciding to just address the weird tension head-on. "I haven't seen you at the university library since the day we met. And I'm down in that archive every single day. Do you have a secret underground tunnel, or are you just a ghost?"
James's hand paused on the fragile stem of his wine glass.
It was a micro-hesitation. A fraction of a second where the charming mask slipped, exposing something cold and incredibly calculated underneath.
"I've been buried in off-campus corporate consultations," he said smoothly. "Lots of heavy travel. But believe me, I've been thinking about you the entire time." His eyes dropped right back to her chest. "Working from home gets lonely."
"A home office guy randomly hanging out in a restricted university basement?" Ebony teased, keeping her tone light. "That's a really long walk just to find a quiet spot to read."
James didn't laugh this time. He leaned his elbows on the table, invading her space again. "I'm glad I made the trip. It led me right to you."
The flirtation hung thick and oily in the humid air. But the pivot that followed gave her severe mental whiplash.
"So," James said.
His tone entirely stripped away the sleazy warmth. It shifted into something clinical, sharp, and intensely focused.
"How many people are actually on your research team? Does the university provide high-level security for that basement lab?"
Ebony blinked, the polite smile faltering on her lips. "Security? It's just standard keycards and a grumpy night guard named Otis who falls asleep watching movies on his iPad."
James nodded slowly. He wasn't looking at her cleavage anymore. His eyes dropped to the center of the table like he was mentally filing a dossier, dissecting the architecture of her life.
"And do you end up having to work late very often? Alone?"
Ebony paused.
A primal misfire went off in her brain. On the phone earlier this week, he'd asked about her favorite music. But here, stripped of the digital distance, he was grilling her about her lab like he was sketching a floor plan to a bank vault.
"We're not curing a zombie virus down there or anything, James," she said, forcing a nervous laugh.
James smiled back, but he looked at her the exact same way a butcher measures a prime cut of meat.
"That kind of proprietary research always attracts serious attention," he said softly.
He reached under the table. His hand clamped down heavily on her bare knee.
Ebony flinched, but his grip was like a vise. His thumb stroked her skin in a way that made her stomach violently turn.
"You must have robust safeguards in place," he pressed, his voice dropping to a whisper. "Digital backups. Physical air-gaps on the servers. Who handles the master keys at night?"
Ebony practically pried his fingers off her leg, shifting her chair backward. Suddenly, her expensive emerald dress felt paper-thin. He wasn't looking at her like a beautiful woman anymore. He was looking at her like a keypad he needed to crack open.
"I'm going to step to the restroom," Ebony said, standing up abruptly. Her voice was gentle and polite—the ingrained reflex of a Southern woman trained not to make a scene in public, even when her survival instincts were screaming at her to run.
"Of course," James replied smoothly. His eyes shamelessly tracked her backside as she pushed her chair in.
As she walked away from the table, she felt his intense gaze pressing between her shoulder blades like a sniper's laser sight.
The fluorescent bathroom light emitted a sick, high-pitched buzz above the spotless mirrors. Ebony leaned heavily over the white sink, white-knuckling the porcelain edge.
She pulled out her phone with shaking hands and hit Ashley's speed dial.
Ashley answered on the first ring. "Hey. You alive? Is he a creep?"
"He's a complete pervert," Ebony whispered frantically to her pale reflection. "He grabbed my leg under the table. But Ash, that's not even the worst part. He keeps asking about the lab."
"What do you mean, the lab?"
"He's asking about the physical security. Who stays late. He asked point-blank if I work alone at night and who holds the master keys."
The background noise of the restaurant died down as Ashley stepped into the walk-in cooler. The line went dead quiet.
"Ebony," Ashley's voice turned freezing cold, entirely devoid of sisterly banter. "That's not a fucking date. That's a deposition. He is casing you right now."
"I joked about not seeing him on campus since we met," Ebony said, her voice trembling as the thick wall of her denial finally shattered. "He smoothly said he's been traveling, but… Ash, he knew exactly what obscure botanical journals I was looking for that day in the basement. I think he was waiting for me."
"Get out of there right now," Ashley commanded, the words hitting like a physical blow. "Now. If he's been stalking your daily patterns at the library, he's not looking for a girlfriend. You're the mark, Ebony."
Ebony stared in horror at her luminous silver eyes in the mirror. A wave of acidic nausea washed over her. She had been so flattered by the charming "meet-cute" that she'd completely ignored the terrifying, statistical impossibility of a non-student stranger just happening to be in that restricted basement aisle on a random Tuesday afternoon.
This son of a bitch had hunted her.
"I'll stay ten more minutes," Ebony said, her stubborn academic pride fighting a losing battle against the urge to climb out the tiny bathroom window. "I need to see if he's actually watching the hallway door. I need to know I'm not just acting crazy."
"Ten minutes," Ashley warned, a lethal edge entering her tone. "Then I am walking off the line, and I'm coming down there with a tire iron. Keep your phone in your hand."
Ebony hung up. She gripped the hard edge of the sink, smoothed her curls in a futile attempt to steady her racing pulse, and took one long, slow breath.
She stepped back out into the main dining room.
The low jazz music felt entirely dissonant now—crooked, mocking. And as she looked across the dimly lit room toward their secluded corner table, the bottom fell out of her stomach.
James wasn't casually looking at his phone. He wasn't politely looking at the dessert menu.
He was staring directly, unblinkingly at the dark hallway.
His posture was coiled tight, his face stripped of the charming, lustful mask he'd worn all night. He was timing her absence.
He looked less like a sleazy date, and terrifyingly like a predator patiently watching the seconds tick down until he could drag her out the back door.
And she still had to walk back to the table. She still had to pull out her heavy chair, sit down, and force a dumb, brilliant smile at the monster while he prepared to consume her life.