Tonight, or no other.

"You don't love me," she whispered, brushing off the arm encircling her waist with no more reluctance than she would a fly, leaning back to let the coarse grain of his neck rub against her cheek.
"No? Unlike, no doubt, all those others you left panting in dark rooms, too afraid of what it would mean to force you to stay?"
She grasped the hand following the lines of her neck, a hand wrought from the stuff of iron and pain. The tendons were taut lines and the fingers hair-triggers in uneasy tension, ready to fire should she allow him to relax his grip. His breathing was steady.
"Is it that I don't love you, or that you don't despise me enough to let me? I don't love you--but there's no way for you to know that."
"Except that you just told me."
"All you know of me is that I'm a fantastic liar. Why believe me now?"
"I never said I did." With her free hand she pushed him away and pulled herself around so that her back was against the door. They stood feet apart, her one hand still wrapped around the back of his wrist, their ankles painted pale yellow in the triangle of light intruding from the hall. Her other hand gripped the handle but did not turn it.

Minutes passed and they stared through each other in perfect silence. He grinned with the grim satisfaction of a magician who has sold his secrets for a chance to escape his illusions, never once letting the tension out of the space between them. The distance drew the lines out of her face, the weariness from her eyes, and the moisture from her tongue. She did not once break his gaze.

"Have I won yet?"
She fell forward, placing her lips to his ear. The words fell from her mouth in a surrendered half-whisper.
"You can have me."
He pulled his hand from hers and in one motion pulled her coat from the rack and draped it around her shoulders. She felt bitter air flow from behind. He had turned the knob for her. Light from the hall poured in through the creaking door, revealing the shabby carpet cushioning their distant shoes.
"Then I already have."
She pulled away and backed out slowly. His grin was gone, but his gaze, piercing, cold, and powerful, remained.
She turned and left without a word, descending the steps of the apartment without a single thought on her mind. The cabbie waiting below kindly asked in a voice of simplicity, "Back home, ma'am?"
She gave her usual response without thinking. "I haven't got one."
For the first time, though, she meant it.