Sociopath

by Lime Craven

She goes to leave, but then turns. "Oh. That software company, The Appening? They sent over some design proofs for a new website. You want to see?"

  "No." I don't want to look at anything, or approve anything, or veto anything. I just want to be left the fuck alone. "You keep them. Tell them I need a few days."

  She sighs. "Right. Okay."

  "Now get the twink file off my desk and take it down to the news room. Stop wasting time."

  Tuija runway-walks over to scoop up the brown folder, and then shakes it in my direction. Her made-up eyebrows dip in. "The trail of batshit tragedy this is about to leave in its wake? I will not be held responsible."

  I wave her away. "Whatever. Fine."

  "I guess I'll go order you a new cell, too," she huffs.

  "Go on, then. Get lost."

  At some point today, I actually have to do some work.

  How the hell am I going to manage that?

  * * *

  When the phone rings for the third time, I peel myself off the couch and swagger over to answer it. I've been asleep for God knows how long—I needed it. The world is just easier with my eyes closed.

  "Uh, Mr Lore?"

  Finn. My absolute fucking favourite person to speak to. Not. "What?" I bark down the receiver.

  "It's Leo. I think you ought to come get her."

  "I'm sorry—what?"

  "She's not well. In our lab. She's...she's asking for you."

  "I'll be there in a moment."

  I shouldn't have let her come in. She was an hour late just because of the press, and there's no way she's recovered from what she saw yesterday. Me, I can block it out—the whole thing is eclipsed by its potential impact on my reputation—but Leo and Rachel were close.

  Too close for my liking, but I can hardly fix that now.

  When I burst into the SilentWitn3ss main office and rush down to the lab area at the back, there are several people kneeling behind a design bench, and Leo's bare legs stretch out from between them. They see me and most of them scatter. You could cut the atmosphere with a knife—and oh, I want to. A blunt one. Make a real mess.

  My little lion isn't herself. No makeup—not that she needs it, but she's nearly always in it—and scraped back hair. She's clad in a denim skirt and a football shirt from some English team. She sniffles quietly, though her eyes flare when she notices me.

  I bend down beside her, warning the others off with a scowl.

  Finn is reluctant to leave. "You gonna be okay?" he whispers to Leo, his beefy hand squeezing her knee.

  I want to drive a pencil through his stupid hand.

  "Get off her," I say in a low voice.

  "But I'm just—"

  "I said, get off her. Stop groping her like some shameless retard and leave us the fuck alone."

  Leo recoils, pulling her knees into her chest, and Finn stomps off to sulk, or masturbate. Probably.

  "Sweetheart." I press a kiss to her cool, damp forehead. "We're going home."

  Leo says nothing, but she lets me scoop her up. I carry her down the hall toward the elevator.

  "Take messages," I tell Fliss as I pass her. "I'll be back in tomorrow."

  * * *

  Today, I don't complain about a security team escort. They get us back to Leo's safely, depositing us near a staff entrance at the back, and I put Leo over my shoulder while I fiddle about in my pocket for my key.

  "Carrying me over the threshold?" she mumbles into my shirt.

  "Something like that."

  Inside, I scrape magazines off her couch and lay her down before switching her alarm off and grabbing a couple beers.

  She hauls herself up to sitting and accepts a bottle. "It's a little early for this, isn't it?"

  "It's past lunch."

  "Oh. Well that makes it okay."

  I arrange myself at the end of couch and beckon for her to come sit between my legs. She crawls over, resting against my chest, her hip digging in beside my stiffening cock. "You comfy?"

  "Uhuh."

  For a while, we lie in silence, drinking while I stroke her tied-up hair. I close my eyes, breathing in the mulled wine scent of her and the candle wax smell of her apartment. Luxuriate in the warm weight of her on my ribs. Like this, I can almost forget the macabre circus my life has become these past few days, and it's a relief like no other. Her stomach keeps gurgling and rumbling; I rub at it with a flat palm, chuckling to myself.

  "You want to order takeout?"

  "No." She puts her bottle down on the floor and comes up over me, her fingers pulling at the buttons of my shirt. She seems to tire of this quickly, then takes my bottle and deposits it with hers.

  "What can I do for you?"

  "Just this." Fingers on the fly of my pants, fetching me out.

  My stiff cock falls into the smooth, silky warmth of her hand. I bite down a groan.

  "Will you make love to me?" she murmurs. "Really slow. Be gentle with me." There's a far off, dilated look in her eyes; desire, but vacant and desperate. "Please."

  I...can try.

  The denim skirt is stiff, but I manage to get it up over her hips. There, I peel aside her black cotton panties and probe until I find the firm rise of her clit. She gasps, pants a little; she's not wet, but doesn't seem to care. I go to sit up—I'll lick her until she's ready, until I'm plastered in her scent and taste—but she keeps me down, pins me, and eases forward to sink on to my cock.

  I don't remember the last time I fucked a woman like this. Oh, I can fuck without cutting—I'd be in jail now if that weren't the case—but it's never been slow or sensual. I'm not that guy. What I am, however, is deliberate, and I can deliberately keep a gradual, grinding pace for my Leo. Bottoming out in her narrow, unprepared pussy is...something else. Every time I thrust up, we both suck in half the room.

  I splay my fingers across her bare thighs, my thumb caressing the band aid that covers her first cut. We're both rubbed by her shoved-aside panties, and the pressure has bite; I can't keep myself from playing with them, from tugging them so they pull on her clit, or brush my cock in a soft ridge every time I slip out of her. And she's wet now. Moaning and wet. Rolling herself over me so I hit all the right spots. Everything in me is pulled iron-tight, my blood hot and hammering in my ears, my mouth, my dick.

  Through blurred vision, I watch her clutch at herself as she comes. She pulls my palm up, licks it with a tongue like slick velvet. Curses into my flesh in warm gusts of fuck, fuck, fuck.

  "Will you do it for me?" she pants, squeezing my fingers. "Come for me, Aeron...do it hard, it's okay...oh...ow, God..."

  I lose myself somewhere between her thighs, pieces of hell there, burning and bright.

  Later, she lies draped over me again, our clothes still dishevelled while she leaks the evidence of my desire into her panties. I can smell it. Her. I don't ever want to be anywhere else.

  "You want to talk about yesterday?" I ask.

  "No." She sighs. "You know what I do want...?"

  I shake my head.

  "I want to cook you Sunday lunch this weekend. I haven't had anyone to cook for like that in ages." She climbs up my chest to play with my collar. A small smile pulls at her lips, sleepy and sated. "You ever had Yorkshire pudding?"

  "What the fuck is Yorkshire pudding?"

  "Oh God." She tuts. "I have work to do."

  "Apparently so." I swirl my fingertips along her spine, and she shivers against me in pleasure. "Is it dessert?"

  "Nope. You have it with roast beef—properly rare roast beef, just the kind you'd like—and it's technically like pancake batter, only—"

  "You eat beef with pancakes? What kind of fuck-ups are you all over there, anyway?"

  She laughs. Slaps at me. "Let me finish! It's baked instead of fried, and it ends up like this puffy ball. All soft and lardy and awesome."

  "You're not really selling it to me."

  "It's delicious, I promise. You'll like it. I want to make it for you." She pauses. Pushes her face into my shoulder. "You could
bring your brother."

  I don't mean to stiffen—normally, I'm not that obvious—but I just came inside her, and I'm disarmed. "Ash is busy."

  "Busy? All the time? Isn't he, like, eight years old?"

  "I don't share him, Leo." I find myself avoiding her eyes. "We're not going to be like that."

  "I see."

  Leo and I have had many awkward silences, especially in the beginning of our relationship. This one, however, feels like the worst of all.

  Eventually, I stretch over to grab the remote and begin flicking through the TV channels, settling on a football game. The shouts and cheers do nothing to drown out my suddenly erratic heartbeat, nor do they distract from the way Leo has begun to shake in my arms.

  "Rachel's mom called me this morning," she croaks.

  I sit up, searching her eyes out. "Wait. What?"

  "She just wanted to tell me not to come to Rach's funeral." Her voice cracks. "Because—because I'm not welcome."

  "I fucking hate Rachel's parents," I spit, clutching her tightly.

  "Why?" She's full on sobbing now. "Because they took your money? Is that what it is?"

  "Because they're full of shit! You think people who really cared about their daughter would have taken a couple mil over giving Rach what she needed?" I'm not an idiot—I know I hurt Rachel. I know she spent years in therapy because of me, repairing her self-esteem and feeling anxious for closure. And I guess, ultimately, she failed. "Let me tell you, sweetheart. We're not the reason she shot herself. They are. The fucking know it. They're passing the buck. If somebody hurt you, I'd cut them up myself, Leo. And if they offered me a payoff, I'd shove their bank notes so far down their throats, they'd be spitting up dollars for weeks. That's if I let them live."

  "That's fucked up."

  "It's the truth. Yeah, you know what? I'm not a nice boy." I snort. "But they're a pair of twisted assholes more interested in their own bank balance. They can jump off a cliff."

  Like I always say: human nature is nails on a chalkboard, no matter what your diagnosis is.

  Leo weeps quietly into my shirt, absorbing all this.

  "I'm making it all go away," I tell her. "You want to see?" Without waiting for an answer, I scroll through the channels to NN24...where they're breaking the story on Montgomery.

  Fucking yes.

  Can't get in with your gagging order now, can you? You fat shit.

  Leo crawls upward, using fistfuls of my shirt for leverage. "What the hell?"

  "It's perfect," I whisper. "You just watch, baby—in a couple days, nobody will remember who Rachel is. We're home clean."

  "Where did you get this?"

  "I have ways and means." I tip her chin up, find her mouth for a kiss. "I told you I'd take care of you, and I meant it. I wasn't just talking about...things."

  "You're taking care of yourself," she mutters, looking away.

  "Both of us, Leo." Doesn't she get how strange this is for me? How can I explain it without telling her what I am? It makes my pulse roil with frustration. "Or you want me to halt my little damage control operation, huh? Have your face plastered over GNS some more?"

  She says nothing. Just lies there, breathing slowly, her fingers still digging through my shirt.

  I'm not just doing this for myself. It pisses me off that she'd even think it.

  Later, when she falls asleep, I load up her laptop. Its neon screen turns my skin cyan blue in the dark. Out of habit, I go through her internet history; it's just tech news sites and Facebook (which I can't log into), email and some fashion blogs. My Forbes interview comes up though. So does my biography on the Lore Corp site. Huh. So she thinks about me when I'm not around, searches out pieces of me, anything she can get.

  I know how she feels. Is that empathy? What the fuck is empathy, anyway, aside from avoiding your own crap and hiding in someone else's?

  I have to know. So I search.

  Then I type my other question into Google. Can sociopaths fall in love?

  The words float there. Just pixels. I don't know why I'm so nervous—I'm not a fucking pansy.

  I hit enter.

  The search spews up articles, and I begin to read.

  * * *

  Tuija is late for work again.

  Screw paparazzi. Screw the cops and forensics assholes who are still taking up half my lobby. I'm done with being inconvenienced by them. I swear, if Tuij is face down in a pool of her own vomit, I'm finally going to fire her ass.

  Leo insisted on coming into work with me, despite the fact she's dosed herself up on Xanax. It's half nine; I predict she'll be out cold on my sofa by eleven, tops.

  Still...I did kinda tire her out last night. Late into the dark hours, when she woke again, something else woke with her. It was hungry and it wanted me. It spilled fresh blood from her healing wounds.

  "Tuija had some budget files for me," Leo says as she straightens my tie. I watch her ass move in the opposite mirrored wall, and give her curves a light spank of appreciation. "You think you could get them for me, if she's not here? I promised I'd go through them with Finn."

  "You sure you should be at work today?"

  She shrugs. Bites her lip. "I don't know what else to do with myself."

  "Then you go get the files. Tuij is pretty organised, and her office isn't locked. I've got some stuff to take care of."

  I need to sift through the entire contents of the internet and bask in the downfall of Dietrich Montgomery. I wonder what his stock's looking like? Is this what happiness really is, the slow curdle of success and adrenaline until you feel drunk and delirious?

  Fucking hell, grasshoppers. Someone should bottle this shit.

  "You're in a good mood today," Leo says quietly.

  "We had a good night." Good probably isn't the best way to describe it; many people would say it was very, very bad. She's limping. Intense is a better word; I think she bruised my hips. "And trust me, today is going to be a very good day."

  She eyes the news screens over my shoulder. "Maybe."

  I give Leo a slow kiss and then watch her heart shaped ass sway as she leaves the room, thinking back to my research last night.

  Sociopaths cannot love in the same way as others...but they can and do still fall.

  Sociopaths love with an all-consuming, dangerous passion.

  The sociopath, who seeks to manipulate all things, may only retain interest in a woman who disturbs the power balance he is used to, rather than one who continues to submit. If she challenges him adequately, he becomes addicted. His attachment to her deepens until he believes himself to be in love.

  When should I tell her the good news...?

  And where the hell is Tuija, anyway? She's hardly ever this late unless I've sent her out on some errand. I'm about to call her on my cell...until I realise it's still smashed up on the carpet. Fucking brilliant.

  I left my temporary cell...I don't even remember. I'll call through to Fliss and get a spare.

  My hand is hovering over the office phone when it begins to ring. Harvey's cell number flashes up on the call ID.

  "Harvey." I find myself grinning. "Your photos have gone down very well."

  "Sir." His voice is unusually subdued. "Are you alone?"

  "Yeah. Why?"

  "Is...is there something we need to talk about? For last night."

  "What?"

  "Were you at my house?" His emphasis is unusual, and it takes me a second to realise what he's talking about.

  No, I do not need an alibi.

  My stomach lurches.

  What? What the fuck would I need an alibi for?

  "I was at Leo's all night," I say quickly. "What's happened?"

  "There's something you need to see. Tuija's apartment. How soon can you be here?"

  "I...twenty minutes." I swallow a lump in my throat. It seems there are things he can't tell me over this phone line.

  "I'll see you soon," says Harvey, and then he hangs up.

  Nothing about this is right. Harvey
provided the escort for me and Leo this morning; he should be back in the building, not at Tuija's place. She has her own security—why would he need to be there?

  A sharp ache claws at my temples, only worsening when I get out into the corridor's florescent lights. I hear every footstep ring loud in my ears. When I pass Tuija's office, Leo steps out, a plastic wallet in her hands.

  She frowns. "Where are you off to?"

  "Have to step out for a while."

  "Oh." She's wound all tight, that tilt to her chin I remember from when we first met; as if she eyes the entire world sideways. "Will I see you later?"

  "I don't know." I stop pacing, yank her against me, and crush my lips over hers. She yelps into my mouth, her arms rigid against my chest.

  "A—Aeron—"

  "See you later." Then I leave her sagging against the wall, my fists balled tight. There's nobody I don't glare at.

  Fifteen minutes later, my driver pulls up outside Tuija's downtown apartment building. Fortunately, I can't see any press; Harvey waits in the sparse, modern lobby, his big dark frame in stark contrast with all the white plastic and glass.

  "Come on," he says, leading me straight to the elevator.

  "You going to tell me what's going on?"

  "We need to get up there first."

  The seconds drag, their claws squeaking along the wall. Tuij has done something stupid. I always thought she was smart, but maybe I'd been wrong; maybe I haven't paid enough attention to the way she's unravelled since Leo came on the scene. Nausea churns in my belly, and the bacon and eggs I ate with Leo earlier suddenly taste foul in my mouth.

  Finally, the elevator beeps and we step out on to Tuij's floor.

  "She didn't come down to her escort this morning," Harvey says in a low voice as we approach her apartment. "We waited until eight thirty and then we came up to see what was going on."

  It occurs to me suddenly that nobody else is here. The hall is quiet. There's no ambulance outside, no police; you could hear a fly sneeze in the silence beyond our carpet-cushioned footsteps. If Tuij is hurt...why is everything so still?

  Outside Tuij's thick wooden door, Harvey knocks once, and another member of his team lets us in. Their faces are identically creased. Quiet.