Crimson Knot

The tie was the first thing I saw.

Not his face, not the sharp cut of his jaw or the way his gray eyes could pin you to a wall from thirty feet away. The tie. Charcoal silk, knotted tight at his throat like it was holding something back, and I remember thinking, that's a man who doesn't leave anything loose. Not a thread. Not a word.

And then he looked up.

I was standing in the doorway of his office with my roommate Kate's camera bag digging into my shoulder and a list of interview questions sweating in my palm, and Christian Grey looked at me like he already knew every answer I was about to ask.

"Miss Steele." He didn't stand. Just said my name like he was tasting it. "You're late."

"Traffic," I said. "The bridge was backed up, and your building has approximately forty-seven security checkpoints, so."

One eyebrow moved. Barely. "Forty-seven seems like an exaggeration."

"Forty-six, then. I lost count after the guy with the wand."

Something flickered at the corner of his mouth. Not a smile. The ghost of one. He gestured to the chair across from his desk, and I sat because my legs were doing something unreliable, and I needed to focus on the questions Kate had written in her neat, looping hand.

*What motivates your philanthropic work?*

*How do you balance business with personal life?*

*What's your greatest weakness?*

Kate had no idea what she was doing when she sent me here. She had the flu, a fever of 102, and a deadline for the student paper that couldn't wait. So I'd put on my one good blazer, the black one with the fraying cuff I kept meaning to fix, and I'd driven across Portland to interview the most private man in the Pacific Northwest.

"Your roommate couldn't make it," he said. It wasn't a question.

"She's sick."

"And you're her substitute."

"I'm her friend."

He leaned back in his chair. The leather creaked. Everything in this office was leather and glass and steel, and the windows ran floor to ceiling, showing the city sprawled out below like it belonged to him. Which, I guess, it kind of did.

"Ask your questions, Miss Steele."

I looked down at the paper. My hands were steady. I don't know how.

"Why philanthropy?"

"Because I can."

"That's not an answer."

"It's the only one you're getting."

I looked up. He was watching me with an expression I couldn't read, something between amusement and calculation, and I felt it in my stomach. A pull. Low and warm and entirely inappropriate for a professional interview.

"Okay," I said. "Different question. Are you always this difficult?"

"Are you always this direct?"

"Only when I'm nervous."

The words were out before I could stop them. I felt my face go hot. But Christian Grey didn't laugh or look away. He tilted his head, just slightly, and the air in the room changed. Got thicker. Heavier.

"You're nervous," he said.

"A little."

"Why?"

Because you're looking at me like I'm something you want to take apart. Because I've never done this before, not really, not with anyone, and somehow you can tell. Because I'm twenty-one years old and I've never been touched, and you're sitting there in your thousand-dollar suit with your hands folded like you know exactly what that means.

"New situation," I said. "New people. It's normal."

"Is it?"

I didn't answer. He didn't push.

The interview lasted twenty more minutes. He answered my questions with the bare minimum of words, and I wrote them down in shorthand that would take me an hour to decipher later. But the whole time, I was aware of him. Aware of the way his fingers tapped once against the armrest, slow and deliberate. Aware of the clock on the wall ticking, and the coffee going cold in the cup I hadn't touched, and the space between us, which felt smaller than it was.

When I stood to leave, he stood too.

"Miss Steele."

I turned. He was close. Closer than I'd realized. I could smell him, something clean and expensive, cedar and citrus and something darker underneath.

"Yes?"

"I'd like to see you again."

My heart did something stupid. "For another interview?"

"No."

The word hung there. I waited for him to explain, to give me something to hold onto, but he just watched me with those gray eyes, patient as a predator.

"I don't," I started. "I'm not."

"You're not what?"

I shook my head. "I have to go. Kate's waiting."

"She's not waiting. She's sick in bed."

"I have to go," I said again, and this time I made it to the door.

"Anastasia."

My full name. No one called me that. Not my mother, not Kate, not anyone. But he said it like he'd been saying it for years, like it belonged to him.

I stopped. Didn't turn around.

"I'll be in touch," he said.

And I walked out of his office with my heart hammering and my hands shaking and a feeling in my chest like I'd just signed something I couldn't read.

The elevator doors closed. I leaned against the wall and closed my eyes.

I was still a virgin.

I'd never told anyone that. Not Kate, not my mom, not the boys in high school who'd tried and failed to get past second base. It wasn't a religious thing or a moral thing. It was just. Mine. Something I'd kept, maybe because I was scared, maybe because I was waiting, maybe because I'd never met anyone who made me want to give it away.

Until now.

The elevator dinged. The doors opened. I walked through the lobby, past the security guards and the marble floors and the enormous abstract painting that probably cost more than my entire education, and I didn't look back.

But I felt him.

Watching. Waiting.

And I knew, with a certainty that settled into my bones like cold water, that Christian Grey was going to change everything.

I just didn't know how much.