Sociopath

by Lime Craven

  "You don't hate me nearly enough."

  Her hand finds the stiff bulk of my thigh and she squeezes, sending shocks of pleasure and adrenaline to the firm rise of my cock. "D-don't stop."

  "You want me to play with your pussy, right here in the office?"

  "I'm doing what I want," she breathes. "Not what I should."

  I find her clit beneath the warm, damp mesh of her panties and press two fingers either side. Roll them each way, very slowly. "Open your gift, Leo."

  She whimpers. "Right...now?"

  "I want to watch." I drop my mouth to her throat, eager for the taste of her anxious sweat. "Do it, and I'll take your panties down."

  As I continue to roll her clit, she pats her hand around on the desk.

  "By the keyboard. That's it—good girl."

  The scene that plays out before me is delicious: Leo, her smoked honey hair all soft and sweet under my jaw and her tight body hot against mine, makes frustrated sounds of pleasure as she scoops up the gift box and tugs at the ribbon. Her breath grows harder; her breasts rise and fall right beneath my eye line like some kind of swollen offering.

  "Come on," I coax, half to her and half to the slick bud of flesh between my fingers. She keeps bucking forward, pushing herself harder against me, and I pull her clit into a pinch of a warning.

  "Ow." She grinds her heel into my foot.

  "Open the damn box."

  After our heated discussion last night, it doesn't escape me that this might as well be makeup sex. I don't even know what to think about that.

  The ribbon comes loose, drifts to the floor, and then she's folding the black lid away while I hold her clit firm and still. Then she's dropping it on the desk. Teasing aside the layers of black tissue paper I used to encase her treat.

  "For my special girl." My words are muffled by her hair.

  "There's nothing. I can't find—oh my G—fuck." The box falls, banging the desk on its way down and spewing its contents over the carpet. Leo jerks from my grasp in a single burst of movement, already sucking at her split finger. Wide black eyes stare at me in accusation. Not far behind her, a sliver of silver winks in the morning sunshine from its nest of shredded black tissue, a thin film of crimson dusting its blade.

  "You asked me what I want," I say. "There's your answer."

  She shakes her head, still suckling her index finger.

  "Think about it, sweetheart. I don't go half way. But if it's what you want...I'll give you everything."

  Poor girl. Her clit must still be throbbing, but she already looks drunk on the shock of her cut. Of course she knew all along what I wanted, but thinking it is one thing and seeing it is quite another.

  "I can't," she murmurs. "I can't, not that..."

  "What, you thought you could fix me instead?"

  She yanks her desk drawer open again and wraps her finger in a tissue. "I don't know what I thought."

  "Then I guess we're done here." I go to leave, but she grabs the sleeve of my shirt.

  "Take it with you. I can't look at it."

  "It's a gift, Leo."

  "But I don't want it," she says through gritted teeth.

  "Well I'm not fucking Target, and I don't do returns."

  "I'm already bleeding. Isn't that enough?"

  She's not even talking about her finger.

  Things go a little blurry at this point. I'm not sure if she moves; all I know is she seems to rush up in my vision—probably because I practically throw myself at her. I'm aware of three things: the box lid crunching beneath my shoe. My pulse's raw stutter. And Leo, Leo gasping for breath and writhing in my forceful hands.

  "You have no idea," I grind out.

  There are a hundred other words I could say. I'd regret none of them, but Jesus, she'd never look at me again.

  I leave before I irrevocably fuck something. My life. Her life. Just her. Suddenly, they all feel like the same thing.

  * * *

  For the rest of the day, desire haunts me. It started the moment I laid eyes on Leo, grew thicker as I stroked her through those thin mesh panties, and now it curdles into obsession as the hours go by, lining the back of my throat so viscously that I can almost taste it. Cherries and alcohol. Jesus. I'm not averse to masturbating in my office but my schedule is about as forgiving as a Playboy model with a paternity suit.

  I sit through a conference call with my newspaper editors like a zombie, listening to them argue back and forth and pretending to be interested in the plethora of broadsheets and tabloids splayed before me. Normally, I lay into them about something like headlines or ad space sales, or the sheer snail's pace at which they appear to be gathering news—not today. I just let them get on with pissing each other off. Not one of them is getting a Christmas bonus for forcing me to listen to a diatribe on Kardashian versus Bieber column inches.

  After that hour of fail, I sit through a briefing with Carson about some of the stories we need to run, reply to emails through lunch, and then do a walk-around in the main news room just for an excuse to go past Leo's offices. Fortunately, there's nothing like an extremist beheading video on a massive screen for getting rid of a hard-on.

  I have my vices, but trust me when I tell you that religious bullshit mutilation isn't one of them. (Does this make me a better man, grasshoppers? I suspect not, but then I also find myself all out of fucks for the giving).

  By two o'clock, I'm aching in all ways possible and can't stand the blood in my own veins. I call Tommy Chavez on my cell three times, pacing my office when he doesn't pick up and growing more irate every second. I'm about to put my fist through one of my plasma screens when the bastard finally calls me back.

  "Where the hell have you been?"

  "Sorry, chief. I gots to have lunch like the rest of you, right?"

  I press my hand over my face. "Tell me you have something on her. Anything." I just want...God, I don't even know anymore. Information. A reason to feel close to her because she's not fucking here.

  It seems he's still eating. Wet smacking sounds squeeze around his words. "Miss Reeves, or the other chick?"

  "Reeves. Leo."

  "Unless she's grown a pair of wings, I'm pretty sure she's in your building, chief."

  "I know that," I snap. "I meant in general. Whatever you have."

  "I got nothing. Otherwise you woulda heard." He slows, slurping up a drink. "She goes to work, stays late, comes home. Kinda boring if you ask me. Although I saw you took her out last night—nice place, that Blue River Kitchen. I'mma take my momma there when I get off this case."

  Don't count your chickens, you blasé fuck. "What about Rachel?"

  "Ain't seen her. It crossed my mind though, I could track her down separate. See what her game is. I got time, what with your lady's little relocation."

  "No." Provoking Rachel in any shape or form is the last thing I want to do. If she's talking, it's too risky, and I've already done enough damage control to last me a lifetime. "Stay away. Just let me know if she shows up, is all."

  "It was just a suggestion."

  "I make the suggestions. Is that clear?"

  "Crystal." He slurps again. "Hey—there's a picture of you going 'round the Twitter, you and blondie leaving the restaurant last night. You seen it?"

  "No, I haven't seen it, and no, I don't care." A lie. I should keep a better eye on this stuff—I meant to leak a few stories into my own media. What the hell is up with my memory?

  Obsession eats everything that desire leaves behind.

  * * *

  I don't really deal with the rest of the day; I just survive it.

  At four thirty, without making a single excuse, I waltz out of the Lore Corp building and drive myself home amid the first congested thickening of rush hour traffic. It's cool outside, but the air is like a pillow in my face regardless. I'm strung up and edgy and on a warpath to absolutely nothing. Nervous. Aroused.

  This cat and mouse game with Leo has gone on too long. Somehow, I need closure. Resolution. The kind t
hat won't land me at the precinct for another couple of days of questioning while fucking Montgomery plays out a defamatory circus. For the first time, I wish to God that Leo was just another screwed up little pickle and not an architect of secrets and lies. For all that her complications thrill me, they're inconvenient. Dangerous. More dangerous than she knows.

  When I get home, Ash and Ethan are out; probably at Little League practise. Or maybe he found a Karate group to try already. I leave a note on the kitchen table—an amusingly wholesome, outdated act—swipe a few things into a bag, and head back out again.

  No time to eat, but no matter. I'll eat at Leo's. I'm sure she won't mind.

  A girl who didn't want me would have changed her locks already, wouldn't she, sports fans? A girl so paranoid would hate the thought of her personal space being violated in such a fashion, and yet my key clicks easily into her lock, and her alarm accepts the code I type in with a resigned little beep. God, I love the smell of her apartment; Leo, gone up in soft smoke. Will it be on her towels and sheets? Probably. Every cell in my body warms at the thought.

  I dump my bag in her bedroom, undress, throw my shirt and suit over the back of her plush vanity chair and then walk through to her little bathroom with its marble sink. While the shower heats up, I go through her medications again—just to be sure. I like the way the ridges of the pill jars feel against the tips of my fingers; child proof. Heh. As if the worst thing that can happen with medication is that it falls into the hands of a kid.

  Steam clouds her bathroom mirror, sits in a damp mist on its burnished copper frame. I watch my face slowly dissipate in the reflection. There are dark circles hanging beneath my eyes to match the fading bruise under my bottom lip, and my cheekbones sit atop hollows I don't remember carving. My abs and external obliques are more prominent, and my shoulder muscles are bulbous and bunched. This obsession thing is eating more than my brain; its teeth work at my flesh, too. I look like I've been carved out of wax. Normally, I go for a healthier look; it comes naturally from my gym work and diet. I guess I've been neglecting my belly a little lately. I'm not the kind of man who can eat and masturbate at the same time.

  Maybe it's knowing that there's a little less fat over my muscles, but the hot water of the shower seems to penetrate quicker, ushering this slow, acrid ache. Various products hang in a wire basket over the glass wall of the shower, and I select a musky, floral body wash called Midnight Tuberose, cover her still-damp flannel with it, and massage it over my skin. The air grows swollen, feeding on the undernotes of her mulled wine scent; the steam is thick and bitter-tasting. When I reach my cock—which has been left untouched today, but strains like it's been far longer—I wrap it in the warm flannel, fist myself, and take long, slow pulls. Jesus. I fall back against the cold glass wall and press my spine into the chill, desperate for something to take the edge off. I can't come yet. Won't. As much as I love the idea of plastering the wall of her shower and even leaving the mess for her to accidentally brush through, it would be a waste.

  An image alights in my steam-addled mind: Leo, making her way into the subway station, still coming down from our shareholder meeting earlier and picking things apart. Warm, stale bodies crush against her in the halls, on the elevator; she floats along oblivious. Plays on her cell. Perhaps there's a little black gift box in her handbag—for her sake, I hope so, because it's always messy when I have to improvise. Perhaps she thinks about the way I touched her this morning and her panties stick to the lips of her pussy. She knows what I want, that I've given her the chance to refuse me; she doesn't know I'm waiting, sick of offering any choice at all. Ill with it. Poisoned. Preoccupied. Ready to hold her down and rip out the kind of virginity that most girls take to their graves.

  Does she wonder how rough I'll be when I fuck her?

  Does she forget to breathe when she contemplates the tip of my knife on her skin?

  Does she stand in this shower each morning and slip soapy fingers over her clit, gasping as she imagines an orgasm conjured by my hands?

  I've never made her beg, grasshoppers. Oh, I've tried—with a gun, no less—but even then, she resorted to sarcasm before giving in. Tonight, she'll need stronger weapons. Let her maim me with them, slice me open, tangle her pink tongue in my veins. I want all of it. No more seduction, no more vague menace in the cracked mess of a chocolate or the blunt scrape of a thorn.

  Climbing out of the shower, I grab a thick black towel from a pile beside the sink, and sling it around my hips. A swipe through the steam on the mirror reveals a flushed, strange monster of a man, my dark circles plumped away but the angles of my cheekbones still high and mighty. Stubble peppers the line of my jaw. Maybe I should smile? Ah. Much better.

  Ha, as Leo would say.

  Back in her bedroom, I rub my aching body with the towel and pull on a pair of track pants. Pat my hair down, run my fingers through it. I'm about to pack my clothes away but then decide I like the idea of my things in her space, smothering little pieces of it. Combined with the intimacy of being barefoot on her carpet, it all makes me feel heavier. Like I could pack more of a punch.

  On the way to the kitchen, I spy her older phone on the hall table and swipe it up. Of course it requires a passcode; I'll get it out of her later. Time to eat.

  Leo keeps a box of eggs near her stove, so I fix myself an omelette in her battered orange pan. While going through her refrigerator for ingredients, I notice that the chocolates are now stored on the top shelf beside a bottle of good champagne. Isn't that interesting? A quick check inside the box tells me she hasn't eaten any, and then I have to leap back to the stove before my eggs burn, but still. The idea that she decided to preserve them, to put them away for best...I like that. Very much.

  Leo isn't due home for a half hour at least, so I make myself comfortable on her couch while I eat. Flick through the cable channels, check my networks. NN24 is running an update report on the next JFK bombing breakthrough. Truth Daily, which is aimed at older viewers, is running a debate on next year's election. Both channels play all day in my office, fading into the background on mute; I almost never put them on at home. Viewing them in this setting is mildly unsettling and I put that down to the anticipation churning in my stomach, despite the eggs. Here I am in Leo's apartment, watching the networks that were probably her first taste of my empire. There's a symmetry there that begs to be explored.

  Ah, so much to explore this evening.

  The possibilities draw closer as the sun sinks lower through her barred window. It hits the horizon not long before eight, cupping the room in its dissolving hands and spurting burnt orange across the walls. When I finally hear Leo's key in the door, I'm watching a football game which I quickly flick off.

  And then I wait.

  Heels on her floorboards, first eager but slowing the second she sets foot in the hall. No alarm blares, though I haven't put lights on yet. She'll be antsy. She'll know. Silence soaks through my limbs, prickles along the back of my neck.

  More sounds: her bag hitting the floor with a little thud. Keys jangling when they hit the table. Footsteps again, unsure.

  "Aeron...?" she calls out in a cracked voice.

  Ah, ah. The way she says my name in that accent: Air-un.

  She inhales deeply. "A-are you here?"

  For another few seconds, I let her simmer alone there in the hallway, let her wonder if she calls to me purely through wishful thinking, rather than logic or fear. Then, when I hear her step to search the bedroom, I spring to my feet and stalk out into the shadows to greet her.

  There are no words in my mouth, or my head, or my...other places. Just a crimson sheen to my line of vision, melting sun, fragile girl. When she turns in her bedroom, breath catching in her throat, I pause in the doorway and allow her to just drink in the sight of me. She's only ever seen me clothed, yet here I am, half naked. Bared. I lean on the door frame, a casual smile pulling at my lips.

  Leo looks dishevelled, as if her journey home was hard. Wisps of hair f
all from her French braid to frame her face; the asphalt eye makeup she favours is feathered out further than usual. As I look her up and down, she stands rigid, clutching the bed frame behind her, and I notice then that though her heels are still on, her legs are bare. Where have those beautiful stockings gone?

  "I didn't invite you in," she manages finally.

  I say nothing. I'd rather watch her struggle to understand the situation we find ourselves in, let her tie a noose of frayed thread as she feels around for words.

  "I told you no, Aeron." Her voice is quiet, pleading. "I said I couldn't."

  I bite my lip in response.

  "I'd like you to leave. Please. I won't tell, I just...please leave."

  "You didn't change your locks," I say.

  She drops her gaze.

  At that act of defiance, I step closer. Can't help it—her refusal sucks me in, practically goads me to test it. "Or your alarm code. You didn't change that. Did you bring home your third gift?"

  "I couldn't leave that at work," she says feebly.

  "Of course not."

  "Because if somebody found it—even in the bin, I—"

  "No gun this time, either. Honestly, sweetheart. It's like you've just given up." Three more steps and I'm right in front of her. Peering down. I don't know whether I can smell her...or me. "You're home later than usual."

  She bleats out a sardonic laugh. "Because you know when I get home, hmm?"

  "I know a lot of things about you." I reach up to smooth the hair from her face. Such a small act, but every time I find myself close to her, I'm drawn to do it—like I'm putting the finishing touches to a masterpiece, cheesy as fuck as that sounds. "But there are some things...I need to experience them for myself."

  "I said no, I said—"

  "Leo." I cup her chin, tip her gaze to meet mine. Her eyes are glassy with tears. "I just want a kiss. You can do that for me, can't you?" I tease my thumb along her lower lip. "Just a kiss."

  She nods. Says nothing.

  I dip my forehead and press it to hers. Breathe with her. Run my free hand along the back of her neck, tug her braid lightly, stroke her nape. I can't remember the last time I petted a kitten but I'm guessing it's a lot like this.