by Lime Craven
A couple of sun-bleached Polaroids are stuck to her refrigerator: Leo between a man and woman I assume to be her parents, beaming into the camera at a restaurant. Leo lying on the floor next to a golden retriever and pulling a stupid face. A shot of a group of girls in a bar, all holding up their cocktails and pouting; Leo stands on the edge, eyeballing her friends with good humour.
I peer into her refrigerator; she keeps eggs, beer, roast chicken and salad. There's popcorn in the cupboard, ice cream in the freezer. A glass dish on the counter holds a half-finished bar of cherry dark chocolate, carefully rewrapped. These are the kinds of foods a girl stocks if she comes home most nights; if she watches television and works instead of going out to see friends or lovers. Not that this is anything useful. I slam the freezer shut, impatient...and that's when I spot it.
There's a camera mounted on the side of one cabinet. A SilentWitn3ss model with its pale grey casing and tiny blue light. My pulse skitters, and then I raise a hand, my dimpled grin flashing at the lens as I wave.
Hello, little lion. Are you watching me?
Of course you are. It's what you've built your career on. It's what you do.
But Leo won't be at her office to watch, not right now. She'll be on the subway. In transit. Before long, she'll be opening the door and wondering why the hell her alarm isn't wailing. My whole body pulls tight with anticipation at the thought.
Other thoughts creep in as I stalk through to her bedroom. Useful thoughts. The question I should really be asking about Leontine is why she's preoccupied with surveillance in the first place. With watching, learning. Why are you so paranoid? What are you afraid of?
It pains me to give kudos to Lincoln Warner. The jackass. But maybe Leo's not so much afraid of something as ashamed. Fearful girls don't look you in the eye the way Leo looks at me; they don't hire private security companies to fuck with you. She's too brazen to be some frightened lamb.
What are you hiding...?
Her room is the nicest of the lot. More personally decorated. A cream feature wall is dissected by the black outlines of hexagons; the bed is piled high with cushions in red velvet and pale silk. Her walk-in closet hangs open, revealing shelves of pretty heels, and a red lace bra is slung lazily over the corner of an art deco dresser. I take the bra in my hand as I walk past.
Squeeze it.
Bring it to my nose, breathe her in.
I find honesty in the scent of her body. On underwear, it can't hide behind perfume, and the clean laundry smell is long gone; it's just flesh and heat and something almost lemony.
There's a diary splayed on her nightstand, its pages taunting from beneath the beaded glass canopy of her chandelier-style lamp. I flick the lamp on, let it illuminate the room. Maybe I'll flick through the diary too.
Or maybe I'll look for more of her clothes. Her panties. Bury myself in the honesty there, take—
Something knocks against the front door. The sound of a bag landing on the floor, perhaps. A key bites into the lock from the outside, and then the door creaks open, heels totter along the tiles. A big lick of heat rolls up my spine. I stretch back like a cat to enjoy it.
She stops almost immediately. Has noticed the distinct lack of alarm and the fact that the lights are on. Jesus. This is better than any drug imaginable, this brief stretch of a moment before she discovers me—the thread between us struggles to unpick its own knots.
Slowly, I reach out toward her lamp and run my fingers through the cascade of glass beads. The jingling sound is faint, but I know she hears it. I can almost see the way it makes her shiver.
Her bag hits the floor again.
Heels, cautious steps.
A familiar clicking sound.
Honey, I'm home.
I sit on the end of her bed and knot my fingers. A slow ache of a smile makes its way across my face, and my eyes fall closed as if I'm being touched. When I open them, Leontine stands in the doorway not three feet away, her gun pointed straight at my head.
Her voice is hoarse, her hair loose and half-hanging over her face. "What the fuck are you doing in my apartment?"
I'm still smiling. "It's nice to see you, too."
"You touch me and I'll blow your head off." Panic pulls at her words, tugs their edges up an octave. "I'll do it."
"You haven't signed the contract."
She blows the hair out of her face to reveal flushed cheeks. "Fuck you."
"Sweetheart. Put the gun down." I raise my hands, spread them in mercy. "I'm not going to hurt you—can't you hear yourself? This is ridiculous."
"I know what you are," she whispers.
"Mmm. Your friend Wentworth filled me in."
"I know what you are, and I won't let you do the same things to me."
Interesting, that she assumes it's what I want. Ah, little thread. You talk to her in your strange language of frayed knots and loose ends.
"Well?" The gun shakes slightly. "You have nothing to say for yourself?"
I shrug. "You have a script? If I read it out, will you feel better?"
"No." She gulps. "And it wouldn't make Rachel feel better, either."
"Ah. So that's what this is about."
She chokes out a stale laugh. "If you say so."
I give her outfit an appreciative nod. She wears a black leather skirt, tight and cut almost to the knee, with a fitted white shirt tucked in. "You're awfully dressed up for a day at a tech office."
"Fuck. You."
"I like it."
"Thanks to your little red carpet trick, I'm now being followed by Us-freaking-Weekly and a bunch of other low lives."
"And you want to look good for their cameras, huh?"
"Stop trying to change the subject."
I grin. "Bad Aeron. Very bad."
"You think all this is funny? You think this is some kind of joke?" The gun shakes again; her palms are sweaty, filming the black metal with a damp gauze of panic. "What kind of monster are you?"
There's no man in monster. And yet, there could so easily be.
"The kind who doesn't get shot by overambitious little girls." I glance about, pretending to observe the corners of her room. "I bet there's no camera in here. It might pick up a few things you'd rather it didn't."
"There's a camera," she says in a weaker voice.
Lies, transparent like glass. Leo, Leo.
"I don't think you bring men here. Or women." Now I get to my feet—gradually, letting her absorb each movement. My heartbeat begins to stutter. "But you undress in here. Show off your body." I step closer; she doesn't move. "You touch yourself."
"There's something very wrong with you," she whimpers.
"You think?"
And then I lunge at her.
She knew it was coming but can't react fast enough, not with her arms locked in place to hold the gun. We fall sideways before she finds the nerve to pull the trigger, and I land atop her in the hall, my torso muffling her pained cry. Within seconds, we're both scrabbling along the floor for the gun; I almost crush her wrist in the process but she yelps defeat at the last moment, dropping the weapon and curling into herself. I leap up to stand over her, pointing the gun at her frightened face.
"Up," I tell her in a calm voice. "Walk back into the bedroom."
"W-why?"
"Up." I offer my free hand, pull her up with it. "Now walk into your room. I'll be right behind you."
She obeys, and what a beautiful thing it is. Head bowed, eyelashes shining with tears she refuses to weep over me. Glossy, pouty mouth drawn and tight. Breath pouring through her teeth in little snares. Perhaps I should be ashamed of the way this gets me hard, but then I'd have to be ashamed of so many things.
"Lie on the bed." I nudge the base of her spine through her shirt. "On your back. Look at me while you do it."
She goes rigid. "What happens if I don't?"
"I'll take what I want, regardless." I run my hand around her hipbone, breathe down over her cheek. "You still think you know what that entails?"
<
br /> No answer. She fights a cry, but crawls forward on to the bed. Her skirt rides up, pulling tighter over her heart-shaped ass and revealing more of her thighs. Then she lies back and turns to look at me. I'd say there is hate in her eyes, but it's a cocktail of something different entirely, a Russian roulette each time she blinks.
"Hands by your sides," I instruct.
Again, she obeys.
I climb on to the bed beside her. Over her. Straddle her hips. The gun sits lazily in my right hand; the left, I use to stroke her hair behind her ears. Just the slightest of touches. The most tactile of rapes.
No little camera hidden there.
"Now. I think you and I need to set a few things straight." The collar of her shirt hangs half-open, and I run the barrel of the gun along the soft skin on display there. Watch how it makes her tremble. "Explain what you know about the incident with Miss Fordham."
"Because you've got no idea what I'm aware of." She fixes her gaze on me in the lamp light. "You don't know, and it's eating away at you."
"There are a hundred things I could do which would be far worse than blowing your brains out. Just to make that clear."
"I know," she spits.
"And your aim here is, what? You were going to hunt me down and punish me for my sins?"
"I didn't hunt you." She swallows. "You handed yourself to me on a silver platter."
"But you do want to punish me." I nudge her chin with the tip of the gun. "Don't you?"
Her eyes darken. "You deserve it. Not just Rachel. Your father, your mothe—"
I smack her across the mouth with the butt of the gun. "Fuck you, you little witch."
She recoils into the pillows, crooning to herself—I haven't made her bleed, but the blow is enough to shock her. Something flickers in her black button eyes; not pain, but the smothering rage of obsession. And where there is obsession, there is the devil on its shoulder: desire. The kind that haunts rather than teases; the kind that gets its teeth in, brings the dark things out on their hands and knees. I know it all too well.
I smooth a finger across her stinging lips. "Now tell me, sweetheart. Tell me what you know."
She shakes her head. A lone tear bursts from one eye and spurts down her hot cheek, taking grey echoes of eyeliner with it.
"Maybe we'll try a different tack, then. Hitch your skirt up. Spread your thighs for me." I climb to one side, leaving her the space to fulfil my request. "Do it."
Another tear. A watery, silent witness. Leo takes a deep breath before peeling the leather skirt up to bunch at her waist. I pry her thighs open with the gun, get them a good distance apart until I spy the silky black fabric of her panties.
"Now." I rest the gun against her bare knee, and reach to stroke the inside of her thigh. "If you know so much...tell me where I cut her."
There's something about those words that sucks the pair of us into a white hot bubble. Leo's nerves peak and grate against the surface; she visibly quivers, her gaze rolling down.
"There," she whimpers, defeated.
"Where?"
"There." She jerks her thigh beneath my fingers. "On the inside."
"Good girl." I rub my thumb against the tendons at the top of her inner thigh, draw it down along her flesh in little scratches. "Small cuts. Pretty patterns. God, she bled."
Old scarlet flashes over Leo's skin to taunt me. The ghost of an orgasm kicks and screams—the hardest I've ever had, and all sprayed over the bleeding insides of Rachel Fordham's thighs. It was like being sucked into a hurricane and spat out across a fire.
And then...there were the other things. Perhaps Rachel didn't talk about those. Either that, or Leo doesn't dare to tempt me.
I tear my gaze from Leo's goosepimpled flesh, and find her eyes. "She told you this."
Leo nods.
"When?"
"We...uh." She breathes deep; seems genuine enough. "We were in therapy together. A while ago."
Fuck.
Who the hell else has Fordham told? She—and her parents—were paid an absolute chunk to stay quiet. To refrain from mentioning names. She should be knee-deep in an unfulfilling marriage by now, reading self-help books and plastering feminist crap all over Twitter.
"You didn't think she'd talk," Leo states. Her accent expresses fear so poignantly; and here I thought stereotypical Brits were natural villains. They make exquisite victims, too. "You thought you'd got away with it, didn't you?"
"Who's holding the gun, sweetheart?"
The dim light hides many things, but not the fact that this bitch actually just rolled her eyes.
"Now who's finding it funny?" I ask.
"It's not funny. None of this is funny. But you're not safe, and you know it. Not until I'm..."
Dead. We don't say it. But the word hangs between us, strung up on a noose made of frayed thread. If I didn't know better, I'd say she was calling my bluff—yet she's clever enough to circumvent that. Doesn't she realise it will tempt me to other things?
If there's one thing more powerful than a bigger death...it's a little one.
My hand climbs up her thigh toward the black silk of her panties. "Are you going to be wet when I touch you?"
"Nice bruise you're sporting," she bites out. "What a big man you are."
I ease away the damp gusset of her panties. I can't see her pussy, but no matter—I'd rather watch her expression twist as I make contact with her swollen flesh. Because she is swollen. Her outer lips peel apart easily, hot and full and slick.
"I'm a big man with a gun," I tell her softly. "A big man who isn't afraid to pull a trigger. But then...you already know that." The firm rise of her clit meets my thumb. I pinch it; her teeth sail into her bottom lip. Gorgeous. I cross my index and middle finger, drop them to the gape of her pussy, and corkscrew into the channel that tension has kept tight.
Leo balls her fists. Arches her back. Bears down on me, surprisingly hard. I work my fingers into her with brief, hard thrusts until her pussy gives and lets me sink past the knuckle. All the while, I watch her; she gulps the air down but refuses to make a sound—which won't do at all, will it? My cock throbs at the feel of her. Further I go, pushing until I come up against the firm pucker of her cervix and she lets out a brief squeal. If I get any deeper inside her, she'll probably choke before she comes.
I edge up a little so we're eye-to-eye. The gun still sits in my right hand, and I bring it to stroke her chin while my other hand moves between her thighs. "Leo. Look at me."
Nothing. She's working so hard to stay still.
I hook my fingers up inside her and shove them into a softer spot, the one right beneath her clit that will force her to respond. And respond, she does; her eyes shoot open and she stifles a gasp. I'm pressing hard, circling now—harder than a girl might ask me to—but the muscles of her pussy begin to ease and undulate with pleasure. With relief.
"You like that?" I whisper.
Wet, fleshy sounds punctuate her panting. What does she have to be ashamed of, I'd wondered? Looky, grasshoppers. Exhibit fuckin' A.
"I asked you to do something." This time, I prod her cheekbone with the tip of the gun. Let her smell the oil and solvent; let her panic over the visions they evoke. Her black button eyes meet mine, and they are pools of sticky longing, hot tar on a baked summer road.
Suddenly, she tips her chin and lets out a moan—a wrought, desperate sound. Her features relax, tense up again; she hates me for this.
Leo begins to rock against my fingers, just slightly. Perhaps she hopes I won't notice. But I see everything, even in darkness—my night vision is stronger than most. Even if I failed to acknowledge the erratic shift of her hips, her pussy quivers and contracts with every stroke. I know a burgeoning orgasm when I feel one. I know, when she starts to gasp, how close she is.
I push the gun further into the smooth skin of her left cheek, and run my tongue along the right. She tastes like smoked honey, like New York and money and the iron stench of blood. "I saw you taste me," I murmur into he
r ear. "On the ledge, at the ball. I bled on your fingers and you licked it up. What do you think that makes you?"
No words. But she finds the courage to look at me again, to beg me with those beautiful eyes.
"I know what you are," I tell her, repeating what she said to me not fifteen minutes ago. "Oh sweetheart, I know. Fuck, you're getting so tight."
"Mmm...I..."
I drop my lips just an inch from hers. Last time, I forced her; this time, I want a willing mouth. "Kiss me."
She straightens against the mattress. Tries to twist her face away, but succeeds only in shoving her cheek into the gun.
"If you want to come, you'll kiss me, Leo." I slow my fingers and drag them just a few millimetres from her most sensitive spot. Pure torment, no matter how hard she tries not to show it. "Am I making myself clear?"
"I, ah, I w-won't." She shakes her head, eyes closed. "No."
"I'm beginning to think you actually enjoy refusing me." I jerk my fingers inside her, forceful and hard.
It hurts her all the more when she expects pleasure. "No—!"
Enough of this. I could force both her kiss and her orgasm, but they'd be half as victorious and not nearly as satisfying. I pull my fingers out, push the gun up beneath her chin. Make her watch as I bring my hand to my lips. If I was hard before...Jesus. The flavour of her, all salt and sweet; even my cock wants a taste.
"I'm going to leave now," I say in a low voice. "You'll stay here until I'm gone. I want you to think very carefully about how, despite the fact that you had the gun and the secret, I'm the one who won."
She skips a breath. Quivers. Her legs are still wide apart, no doubt to usher cool air toward the flesh I've made so tender.
"I'll be interested to hear your thoughts on the contract tomorrow. You have my card." I finally release her, easing off the bed to stand. "I'll leave your gun on the table in the hallway."
She stares up at me and swallows. "Q—quite the gentleman."
I shoot her a grin, dimples and all. Run my palm over her bare knee as I walk past. "If you want to finish yourself off, I won't judge, sweetheart."
